(Photo: Getty Images)Public Garden
Boston, Mass.
Visitors who meander along the colorful pathways of Boston’s Public Garden get a free pass to the past. The park, founded in 1837, is America’s first public botanical garden.
The 24-acre park contains a lagoon -- with Boston's famous swan boats and two real-life swans -- and many formal plantings that vary from season to season. The garden prides itself on allowing visitors to view plants at their peak, thanks to 14 greenhouses that supply flowers for the park's many beds.
Public Garden, with its signature weeping willows and rose and bulb gardens, is part of a string of parks that create the city's Emerald Necklace -- a haven of tranquil beauty in downtown Boston.
