The Public Garden is described by the Friends of the Public Garden as follows:
"Boston’s Public Garden is the groomed and formal younger cousin to the more casual and boisterous Boston Common. The first public botanical garden in America, its form, plantings, and statuary evoke its Victorian heritage. This green and flowering oasis in the heart of a great metropolis has become a Boston icon. No visit would be complete without a stroll in the Garden and a voyage on one of its Swan Boats.
The Garden is truly a people’s park and a public pride. It is not only accessible to everyone, but citizens have always played an extraordinary role in protecting and preserving it. Observing the Garden on a peaceful summer’s day with the trees in leaf, the flower beds bright with color, and the Swan Boats tracing their tranquil course around the serpentine pond, you would never think of it as a civic battleground. In fact, it has been an ongoing struggle to keep these twenty-four acres of reclaimed land as a place of quiet beauty for the enjoyment of all."
The City of Boston provides the following:
Public Garden
Established in 1837
Two centuries separate the creation of the Boston Common and the Public Garden, and what a difference that period made.
In 1634 the Common was created as America’s first public park; it was practical and pastoral with walkways built for crosstown travel. In contrast, the Public Garden was the first public botanical garden in America. It was decorative and flowery from its inception, featuring meandering pathways for strolling.
The Victorian Touch
The Victorians ushered in the style of park which featured the gardener’s art. They designed vibrant floral patterns in the Garden which utilized new techniques of collecting, hybridizing, and propagating plants. With access to showy annuals and greenhouse-grown plants they bedded the Garden with colorful displays and planted exotic imported trees. George Meacham used these new techniques to win the public design competition held for the Garden, for which he received a $100 prize.
In the early days, some complained that the unnatural combinations of colorful plants were garish beyond the bounds of good taste. Now Boston calls the Public Garden one of its greatest attractions.
Visit the Garden
The Parks Department maintains the Victorian traditions to the best of their abilities, so you can judge its beauty for yourself. Admire the rich and unusual plants, the Lagoon, the monuments and fountains, and the Swan Boats created and operated for over 100 years by the Paget family.
Boston Parks and Recreation Department grows all the plants used in bedding-out the Public Garden in their greenhouses. Over 80 species of plants are cultivated there for future plantings in the Garden and more than 50 other locations around the city. Due to the wide variety of plants and its romantic setting, the Garden attracts many weddings.
The non-profit citizen’s advocacy group Friends of the Public Garden and Common formed in 1970 to preserve and enhance the Boston Public Garden, Common, and Commonwealth Avenue Mall in collaboration with the Mayor and the Parks Department of the City of Boston. The Friends number over 2500 members and many volunteers, and have also produced a brochure detailing the park's history.
Wikipedia describes the park as follows:
"Permanent flower plantings in the garden include numerous varieties of roses, bulbs, and flowering shrubs. The beds flanking the central pathway are replanted on a rotating schedule throughout the year, with different flowers for each season from mid-spring through early autumn. Plantings are supplied from 14 greenhouses the city operates at Franklin Park for the purpose.
The Public Garden is planted with a wide assortment of native and introduced trees; prominent among these are the weeping willows around the shore of the lagoon and the European and American elms that line the garden's pathways, along with horse chestnuts, dawn redwoods, European beeches, ginkgo trees, and one California redwood.
Together with the Boston Common, these two parks form the northern terminus of the Emerald Necklace, a long string of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. While the Common is primarily unstructured open space, the Public Garden contains a lake and a large series of formal plantings that are maintained by the city and others and vary from season to season.
During the warmer seasons, the 4 acres (16,000 m2) pond is usually the home of one or more swans and is always the site of the Swan Boats, a famous Boston tourist attraction, which began operating in 1877. For a small fee, tourists can sit on a boat ornamented with a white swan at the rear. The boat is then pedaled around the lake by a tour guide sitting within the swan.
The current pair of swans are mute swans named Romeo and Juliet after the Shakespearian couple, however, it was found that both are female.
The Public Garden is rectangular in shape and is bounded on the south by Boylston Street, on the west by Arlington Street, and on the north by Beacon Street where it faces Beacon Hill. On its east side, Charles Street divides the Public Garden from the Common. The greenway connecting the Public Garden with the rest of the Emerald Necklace is the strip of park that runs west down the center of Commonwealth Avenue towards the Back Bay Fens and the Muddy River."