The Jewel City | Page 7

wall, which thus appears a solid mass of greenery. The little plant looks
like the common ice-plant of old-fashioned gardens, and is actually kin
to it. It asks little of this world, is accustomed to grow in difficult
places, and is kept green by sprinkling. If a section of it gives up the
struggle, the tray may be replaced with a fresh one. From time to time a
blush of tiny pink flowers runs over the wall. There seems to be no
season for the blossoms, but whenever the sun shines, this delicate
shimmer of bloom appears.
The season opened in the great sunken garden of the Court of the
Universe with solid masses of rhododendron. The Court of the Ages
was a pink flare of hyacinths, which, with an exquisite sense of the
desert feeling of the court, were stripped of their leaves and left to stand
on bare stalks. The South Gardens and the Court of Flowers were a
golden glow of daffodils. Daffodils, too, were everywhere else, with
rhododendron just breaking into bloom. The daffodil show lasted
several weeks until, over night, it was replaced by acres of yellow
tulips blooming above thick mats of pansies. This magic change was
merely the result of McLaren's forethought. The daffodils had all been
set at the right time to bloom when the Exposition opened. The pansies
were set with them, but were unnoticed beneath the taller daffodils.
Unnoticed also were the tulips, steadily shooting upward to be ready in
bloom the moment the daffodils began to fail. One night and morning
scores of workmen clipped off all the fading daffodils, and left a yellow
sea of tulips with cups just opening. When the tulips faded early,
because of continued rains, the solid masses of pansies remained to

keep up the golden show. With the end of the yellow period came three
months of pink flowers, to be followed in the closing third of the
Exposition's life by a show of variegated blooms.
This marvelous sequence of flowers without a gap is not the result of
chance, or even of California's floral prodigality, but of McLaren's
hard-headed calculation. He actually rehearsed the whole floral scheme
of the Exposition for three seasons beforehand. To a day, he knew the
time that would elapse between the planting and the blooming of any
flower he planned to use. Thus he scheduled his gardening for the
whole season so that the gardens should always be in full bloom. In
McLaren's program there are ten months of constant bloom, without a
break, without a wait. No such gardening was ever seen before.
Needless to say, it could hardly have been attempted elsewhere than in
California.

III.
The South Gardens

A charming foreground to the great palaces--Palace of Horticulture and
some of its rare plants--Food for pirates--Ancient and blue-blooded
forest dwarfs--The Horticultural Gardens--House of Hoo Hoo--Festival
Hall, with its fine sculptures by Sherry Fry--A remarkable pipe organ.

Entering the Exposition by the main or Scott Street gate, the visitor has
before him the beautiful South Gardens. (See p. 23.) These form an
animated and effective foreground for the Exposition palaces. Except
for their fountains, the gardens and the structures in them are less
notable for sculpture than the central courts of the Exposition. Most of
the plastic work here is purely decorative. The gardens are formal,
French in style, laid out with long rectangular pools, each with a formal
fountain, and each surrounded by a conventional balustrade with flower
receptacles and lamp standards. In harmony with their surroundings,
the buildings, too, are French, of florid, festival style.
The Palace of Horticulture, Bakewell and Brown, architects, is the
largest and most splendid of the garden structures. (p. 24.) Byzantine in
its architecture, suggesting the Mosque of Ahmed I, at Constantinople,

its Gallic decorations have made it essentially French in spirit. The
ornamentation of this palace is the most florid of any building in the
Exposition proper. Yet this opulence is not inappropriate. In size and
form, no less than in theme, the structure is well adapted to carry such
rich decoration. This is the palace of the bounty of nature; its
adornment symbolizes the rich yield of California fields.
In harmony also with the theme, the human figure is absent from the
sculpture, save in the caryatids of the porches and the groups
supporting the tall finials. Fruits and flowers, interwoven in heavy
garlands and overflowing from baskets and urns, carry out the idea of
profuse abundance. The great dome, larger than the dome of either St.
Peter's at Rome or the Pantheon at Paris, is itself an overturned fruit
basket, with a second latticed basket on its top. The conception of
profusion becomes almost barbaric in the three pavilioned entrances,
flanked on either side by