This park should not be confused with Alexander Park

Alexander Park

Alexander Park is a park in Petrogradskaya Storona of Saint Petersburg, Russia....

 in St. Petersburg and Alexander Garden

Alexander Garden

Alexander Gardens was one of the first urban public parks in Moscow, Russia. The park comprises three separate gardens, which stretch along all the length of the western Kremlin wall for between the building of the Moscow Manege and the Kremlin.-History:...

 in Moscow.

The Alexander Garden (Александровский сад) lies along the south and west façades of the Russian Admiralty

Russian Admiralty

Admiralty Board was a supreme body for the administration of the Imperial Russian Navy in the Russian Empire, established by Peter the Great on December 12, 1718, and headquartered in the Admiralty building, Saint Petersburg....

 in St. Petersburg, parallel to the Neva River

Neva River

The Neva is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length , it is the third largest river in Europe in terms of average discharge .The Neva is the only river flowing from Lake...

 and Admiralty Quay, extending from Palace Square

Palace Square

Palace Square , connecting Nevsky Prospekt with Palace Bridge leading to Vasilievsky Island, is the central city square of St Petersburg and of the former Russian Empire...

 in the east to St. Isaac's Cathedral in the west. The English park

English Park

English Park is a multi-use stadium in Christchurch, New Zealand. It is currently used mostly for football matches and is the home stadium of Canterbury United. The stadium has a capacity of 9,000 people....

 is named after Alexander II of Russia

Alexander II of Russia

Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...

 who ordered some 52 species of trees to be planted there. It was formerly known as the Admiralty Boulevard, the Admiralty Gardens, and the Labourers Garden.

The garden was designed by Luigi Rusca

Luigi Rusca

Luigi Rusca was a Neoclassical architect from Ticino who worked in St. Petersburg, Russia between 1783 and 1818. He was apprenticed to Georg Veldten and Giacomo Quarenghi, then went on a successful career on his own...

 in 1805. William Gould, an English-born gardener, was hired to raze the southern ramparts of the Admiralty Fortress, replacing them with four lime-tree alleys. The moat of the fortress was filled in 1819, making room for additional lanes. The garden was a traditional place for Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

 and Maslenitsa

Maslenitsa

Maslenitsa . Maslenitsa corresponds to the Western Christian Carnival, except that Orthodox Lent begins on a Monday instead of a Wednesday. The Orthodox date of Easter can differ greatly from the Western Christian date. In 2008, for example, Maslenitsa was celebrated from March 2 to March...

 revels. Three lanes leading from the Admiralty tower to Nevsky Avenue, Voznesensky Avenue and Gorokhovaya Street

Gorokhovaya Street

Gorokhovaya Street is a north-south thoroughfare in the Central Business District of Saint Petersburg.Gorokhovaya Street extends from the Admiralty and runs south, crossing the Moyka River and the Griboyedov Canal, crossing the Garden Street near Sennaya Square. Running south, crossing Fontanka...

 were designed by Ivan Fomin

Ivan Fomin

Ivan Aleksandrovich Fomin was a Russian architect and educator. He began his career in 1899 in Moscow, working in the Art Nouveau style. After relocating to Saint Petersburg in 1905, he became an established master of the Neoclassical Revival movement...

 in 1923. This arrangement made the Admiralty Tower the focal point of the entire downtown.

By contrast with the Summer Garden

Summer Garden

The Summer Garden occupies an island between the Fontanka, Moika, and the Swan Canal in Saint Petersburg and shares its name with the adjacent Summer Palace of Peter the Great.-Original:...

, the Alexander Garden originally had no statuary. It was not until 1833 that Paolo Triscorni's marble copies of the Farnese Hercules

Farnese Hercules

The Farnese Hercules is an ancient sculpture, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by a certain Glykon, from an original by Lysippos that would have been made in the fourth century BC...

and Farnese Flora appeared. A fountain

Fountain

A fountain is a piece of architecture which pours water into a basin or jets it into the air either to supply drinking water or for decorative or dramatic effect....

 was installed in front of the Admiralty tower in 1879. The Nikolai Przhevalsky

Nikolai Przhevalsky

Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky and Prjevalsky, ; —), was a Russian geographer of Polish background and explorer of Central and Eastern Asia. Although he never reached his final goal, Lhasa in Tibet, he travelled through regions unknown to the west, such as northern Tibet, modern Qinghai and...

 monument and four bust

Bust (sculpture)

A bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, as well as a variable portion of the chest and shoulders. The piece is normally supported by a plinth. These forms recreate the likeness of an individual...

s (showing Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

, Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest...

, Vasily Zhukovsky

Vasily Zhukovsky

Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...

, and Mikhail Glinka

Mikhail Glinka

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka , was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music...

) date from the 1890s. Chancellor Gorchakov's statue was added in 1998.