Monterey cypresses and eucalyptus, banked with acacias.

The entire city side of the South Gardens is bordered by a wondrous wall
of living green,--not a hedge, but truly a wall,--the most surprising
of all McLaren's inventions. For this wall, though living, is not rooted
in the ground, but is really a skeleton of timbers, three times the
height of a man, paneled solidly on both sides with shallow boxes of
earth thickly set with a tiny green plant, which, as though crushed down
by the weight of its name, Mesembryantliemum spectabilis, hugs the soil
closely. Each box, really nothing more than a tray, is barely deep
enough to contain a couple of inches of earth, and is screened over with
wire mesh to prevent the slice of soil from falling out when it is set
on edge. Some thousands of these boxes are required to cover the entire
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