A very eye-catching photo - really charming. A red-brick wall at the back of an enclosure in a cold climate is one of those great inventions that is sadly becoming less and less common as cold concrete takes over.Nobody visiting a zoo on a cold day can fail to observe how many animals enjoy staying close to the red-brick wall as of course it is the warmest area of their enclosure.I hope zoos will go back to using this, and of course it is the original ecological solution with zero energy cost.
I love the kitchen garden setting for Marwell's lemurs: One of those ingenious blends of the park's history with the animals, like gorillas in the walled garden at Howletts and rhinos in front of the manor at Cotswolds, and as you say it really catches the warmth, which the lemurs love for sunbathing. In his book, John Knowles told of the day the planning inspector came to check out the garden after he made the application for the lemur enclosures. The inspector said he might as well keep it a kitchen garden, to which Knowles replied that kitchen gardens were neither endangered or of interest to Marwell's visitors.
