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