Instead of encouraging original designs, she saw to it that particular English gardens were imitated, and she ensured through various devices that the visitors be aware of the semiotic, representational nature of Tsarskoe Selo. The cultural and political rationale for this concept can be derived from her correspondence with Voltaire. Catherine responded by creating gardens in St. Petersburg, but arranging space in such a way that it evoked the South and the West. St. Petersburg thus laid claim to becoming a political and cultural center by absorbing the features of the countries it emulated. The garden thereby becomes an imperial trope, in that it signifies the territorial and symbolic ambitions of Russia.
Russian odes promote a different rational for gardens.
They present the garden as a sight which denotes the ability of the ruler to transform the physical environment of Russia and therefore to effect changes in the attitude of its subjects, in good Montesquieu-inspired fashion. Yet Catherine also disguised the public function of her landscape design. She promoted the view that her stakes in Carskoe Selo were strictly private, that the park served primarily as a space for her personal enjoyment. Countless paintings, engravings, anecdotes, and literary pieces perpetuate the image of Catherine promenading with her dogs in domestic attire, absorbed in a private moment of contemplation of nature. The paper ends by examining the public function this stereotypical representation of Catherine as a private individual strolling in her garden may have had.