The Court of Flowers
Dedicated to the Oriental Fairy Tales.
This exquisite court is by Geo. Kelham of San Francisco, who came from New York just after the San Francisco fire to help in the reconstruction of the city.
He is a man of pronounced ability and has just won in the competition for plans for the new San Francisco Public Library.
The court is made one of great beauty by the collaborated work of Mr.
Geo. Kelham, the architect; Mr. Jules Guerin, the colorist, and Mr. John
McLaren of San Francisco, the chief of landscape gardening.
A loggia runs around the second story of the court, interrupted along
the face by niches which hold "The Oriental Flower Girl," designed by
Mr. A. Stirling Calder of New York, but worked out in the studio of the
Exposition.
Coupled columns, suggesting glacial ice, form a colonnade around three sides of the court, the fourth side opening into the Avenue of Palms.
As you walk down the main path of this court you are held spell-bound by the fairy-like appearance of the albizzia lophantha, trimmed four feet in height, the top of which branches out into a head five feet across.
One has the feeling of meeting fairies with their skirts out ready for the dance - a veritable fairy ballet. Nothing could be more lovely than this remarkably treated tree. The rich yellow fluff that will soon appear, lasting for some four to six weeks, will be one note of the yellow chord to be struck in this court-pansy, daffodil, albizzia, the orange and the yellow background of niches. (This floral music for March and April.)
A symphony in yellows.
The groups of trees at the north are the eugenia myrtifolia.