Go Green with the Easigrass Big 5

Put away your watering can, kiss your garden gnomes goodbye and welcome the Easi Zoo! Easigrass, the world’s leading artificial turf brand and the creator of South Africa’s most realistic and highest quality artificial grass, is taking on another horticultural challenge – topiary!

Topiary is the art of training and pruning plants into different shapes and forms. Dating back to Greek and Roman times, it is a type of living sculpture and has been used through the ages to decorate the gardens of everything from temples to grand manor houses – think labyrinths and mazes – to perfectly preened English country gardens.

The only problem, according to Herve Truniger, National Account Manager, Easigrass South-Africa, is that carefully manicuring these living sculptures is no easy task. In addition to choosing the right perennials, it can take years to coax them to grow, prune and mulch them so that they ultimately take on easily recognisable forms – and these perfectly pruned garden masterpieces can be easily wiped out by a bought of frost or a drought.

“While topiary – or the inclusion of a home-grown sculpture – can add a great talking point or even a dash of elegant decoration, it’s no easy task. We’ve cheated a little and recycled offcuts of our Easigrass that is used in gardens and sports fields,” explains Truniger.

It all started with the ultimate marketing tool – a smart car covered with Easigrass that became a talking point at almost every traffic intersection and is a registered trademark to Easigrass.

Add a few recycled tin cans which are cut up and shaped into the skeletons of a variety of animals and then covered with Easigrass and you have what Truniger now calls the Easi Zoo. In addition to the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino), Truniger and his team can create a grassy menagerie of up to 40 different animals, including a 6m giraffe, and full-size zebras, cows and even a pig.

Each of these Easigrass animals vary in height according to the different creatures. The Rhino turf “rhino”, for example is 5 metres long. Easigrass is currently crafting one complete with a slit to form the ultimate green collection box for the Rhino Foundation.

Spurred on by the recycling bug and initially thought to be nothing more than a gimmick, this zoological connection has proved extremely popular with owners of game farms, restaurants and children’s play parks and Easigrass is selling more and more.

A Cape Town home owner has become a neighbourhood talking point with seven Easigrass creatures quite at home foraging on the verge outside his house.

“The best thing about the Easi Zoo is that it not only needs no fences but doesn’t require any maintenance either. You won’t need to water, clip or feed any of these loveable animals and, aside from a little dusting now and then, you can have and evergreen safari park or petting zoo year-round,” laughs Truniger.

Although not every home owner is likely to open his garden to the Easi Zoo, Truniger adds that offcuts of artificial turf used in garden areas, patios, on terraces and play areas could even be recycled and used to cover dilapidated garden pots or tired garden benches and furnishings.

Easigrass is a member of the Van Dyck Floors group.