SPANISH GARDENS 



Looking now toward the left of the walk, the 

 character of the planting is different. On a slight 

 mound is the effective group of cacti previously 

 mentioned, which give a semi-humorous impres- 

 sion. They seem to people the ground. One re- 

 members the phrase, "Men as trees walking." 

 Those who know this cactus will understand; yet 

 the beauty of it here is very great. The ground 

 beneath and around is covered with the purple- 

 flowering Verbena venosa and the beach strawberry 

 native about San Francisco. This has a wonderful 

 dark foliage and plenty of large white flowers, but 

 no fruit. Beyond the cacti, just overlapping them, 

 is a very widely spaced group of grasslike plants, 

 dasylirions, in three varieties, which give this part 

 of the garden the look of having been gone over 

 by an etcher's needle. The threadlike effect is 

 only partly given in the illustration. More of 

 the low purple verbena, next a large American 

 agave, silvery green and gray on the shining, green 

 carpet of the strawberry leaves; then Phormium 

 tenax, or New Zealand flax, a valuable fibre-plant; 

 Yucca baccata and Dracaena draco rise above the 

 masses of escholtzias, with their orange flames; 

 more blue-gray agaves, yellow sedums rising from 

 groups of lemon-yellow gazanias, all backed by a 

 handsome shrub of Grevillea thelemaniana, and a 



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