The Public Garden, also known as Boston Public Garden, is a large park located in the heart of Boston, Massachusetts, adjacent to Boston Common.

The Public Garden was established in 1837 when philanthropist Horace Gray petitioned for the use of land as the first public botanical garden in the United States. Grey helped marshal political resistance to a number of Boston City Council attempts to sell the land in question, finally settling the issue of devoting it to the Public Garden in 1856. The Act establishing use of the land was submitted to the voters on 26 April 1856 where it passed with only 99 dissents.

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.[8] 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.

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