Russian flower gardens

2. Russian Gardening, in respect to the Culture of Flowers and Plants of Ornament 468. Dutch flower-roots would doubtless be introduced in the imperial gardens with the Dutch taste in design, and soon after copied by such of the nobility as could afford to copy in matters of this kind. It was reserved, however, for Catherine II. to give a serious impulse to a taste for floriculture, by establishing at St. Petersburgh the first public botanic garden, in 1785, for the use of the academy of sciences. Another was soon after formed for the medical college.