The biggest celebrities in Boston's Public Gardens are characters from children's literature. In Robert McCloskey's beloved Make Way for Ducklings, a family of ducks travels from Boston's Charles River, with the help of local police officers, to the Public Gardens, where they decide to live. The charming scene of Mrs. Mallard and her eight little ducklings all in a row waddling across the street is immortalized in one of the garden's most popular statues. In E. B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan, Louis the mute swan makes a name for himself by playing his trumpet as he swims alongside the swan boats on the pond. He, too, has a statue devoted to him.
The pond is famous for its swan boats, which have been making leisurely pedal-powered cruises around the water in warmer months since 1877. Children can feed the many ducks, geese, and swans that congregate on the banks of the pond near the oldest botanical garden in the United States. Established in 1837, it has more than 600 varieties of trees and ever-changing flower displays.
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