plants needed for the beautiful flower-beds which surround their homes. 

 Large and rare trees are imported to be set out on the lawns. 



Almost all these estates have their swimming-tanks of concrete, some 

 as long as one hundred feet and fifty in width. All have their tennis 

 courts, and some have race-tracks and polo-fields, the polo-team of San 

 Mateo and Burlingame being known the world over. 



OUR COSMOPOLITAN GARDENS 



BBLLB SUMNER ANGIER 

 Aatbor of «The Garden Book of California" 



THE hooded oriole is making a great fussing and chattering out in the 

 garden. It is "building season," and he has taken possession of the 

 big Abyssinian banana, and, as the majority of the male kind is apt to 

 do. Is actively "pulling down" in order that he may "build up" accord- 

 ing to his own creative ideas. If I were not the most patient creature in 

 the world, and a constant lover of birds, I should surely remonstrate with 

 him, for he rips, rips, rips at the great glorious smooth green leaves with their 

 magnificent red midrib until he gets hold of a fiber or thread, then zip — 

 bang! a crack in the leaf, and he flies off triumphantly with his home- 

 grown building material, which he has firmly attached to the underside 

 of the leaf that comes nearest under my window, where he is weaving his 

 long nest, while he leaves the rest of the tree most ragged and sorry-looking 

 I must admit. 1 can scarce find time to write about him, so attractive do 

 I find his yellow and black and white plumage, with its glint of orange 

 here and there. His wife is not so gay in attire, but she is a graceful, 

 slender creature in dun and yellow, and I do like the way in which she 

 keeps her liege lord and master about his business! She sits on the tele- 

 phone-wire and gives advice at intervals in low but emphatic notes. I 

 think she does n't half approve of his belonging to a union, which he cer- 

 tainly must, as he only works about half as long as do all the other birds 

 about, and never overtime. 



Sitting here at the upstairs window of my den this lovely May morn- 

 ing watching the oriole, I have been idly recalling the nativity of the trees 

 and shrubs and plants in my garden. It is here I think lies one of the 

 chiefest charms of the California garden — its cosmopolitan make-up. Here 

 the Southern oriole with his brilliant plumage is nesting in the rarely 

 beautiful Abyssinian banana. Over yonder a demure brown wren has 

 housed in an Italian cypress, the linnet has her nest in a Japanese honey- 

 suckle vine, and a quaint little brown bird that looks like a thrush has 

 found a resting-place for the summer months in a weeping willow that 

 tradition says formed its habit of weeping on the banks of the Tiber. 



Here are palms from North Africa, the south of India, and the remote 

 canons of Northern Mexico, ivy from England, the pepper-tree (Schinus 

 molle) from Peru, and calla lilies from the heart of South Africa. My roses 

 are hybrids, from France perhaps, and at least one from sunny Spain. 

 Australia has furnished acacias with golden bloom that fill the air with 

 sweetness. A rare wistaria that may have come from either China or 

 Japan climbs over the balcony, while brilliant-hued cannas from Guiana 

 flank the rear walls. 



Mexico, South America, Switzerland, and Norway have representatives 

 among the trees, and Holland has furnished some of the bulbs. I have only 

 a tiny formal garden myself, but I venture to assert that the gardens of 

 Thorne Street on this block could produce flowers that find their nativity 

 in other lands until every nation of the world would be represented — and 

 more, for there is always California to be remembered, and no mean place 

 has our beloved State taken in furnishing the gardens of the world with 



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