sentences:  Part of the site had already been planted with fine trees in 1787 for Prince Potemkin by the English landscape gardener William Gould as part of Potemkin's "improvements" to the area in perpetration of a visitation by Catherine the Great following Potemkin's bloodless annexation of the Crimea to Russia.On acquiring ownership of the site, Vorontsov immediately employed the German gardener Karl Kebach to further improve the site and layout the grounds and gardens for the proposed new palace.In 1824, the architect Philip Elson was commissioned to build a small house for the Vorontsov family to inhabit while the new palace was under construction.