Seoul Botanical Garden Opens Gardens from the '2nd Planting Design Competition'... Five Sites Created in Yeollin Forest Area

Judging by October, Awards in November... Grand Prize Team Receives Seoul Mayor's Award and 5 Million Won Prize Money

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] Seoul City announced on the 4th that it will open the gardens from the '2nd Seoul Botanic Park Planting Design Competition' starting on the 5th. Five gardens have been created in a 1,500㎡ area around the Open Forest, and the final awards will be given in November based on the results of monthly on-site evaluations.

Seoul Botanic Park held the 'Planting Design Competition' for the first time last year to experiment with and share various planting and management techniques. The gardens will be maintained for three years and used for vegetation monitoring, planting, and plant education.

The theme of this competition is 'Boundary and Symbiosis: Shade Gardens with Plenty of Light,' focusing on designing appropriately and selecting species to coexist with the large trees such as Zelkova and Elm trees located in the garden spaces. A total of 37 teams, including landscaping experts, students, and citizens, applied, and after two rounds of judging, five final teams were selected.

Seoul City will evaluate the process of change and maturation of the gardens until October. This year, the evaluation method is diversified by introducing a citizen evaluation system alongside planting design and landscaping experts, and the scores from both sectors will be combined for the final judgment. The 'Planting Design Competition Citizen Evaluation Group' will be recruited in May.

The selected works this time were mainly chosen for their focus on the themes 'Light and Shade,' 'City and Forest,' and 'Birth and Extinction,' which suit the characteristics of this year's garden sites. Grey for Green (Lee Doo-ri and two others), which included three researchers from the National Arboretum, used various materials to recreate diverse planting conditions in a monotonous park environment. They erected flagstones to plant rock plants between them and applied a variety of herbaceous plants such as Cimicifuga, Cardamine leucantha, and Saxifraga to create a Korean-style forest garden.

In the Rule in the Shade garden (Kim Gyu-sung and one other), which expresses the forest order where small sun-loving plants sprout as if by promise when a little light enters among shade plants, visitors can find various shade plants growing under the canopy such as Dryopteris crassirhizoma, Carex morrowii, and Epimedium koreanum. At 37.5N126.8E (Choi Ji-eun and one other), the boundary of birth and extinction is expressed where life blooms over trees that have dried and crumbled during winter. Notably, the harmonious arrangement of nectar plants like Cimicifuga, Aquilegia, and Deutzia, and shrubs such as Hydrangea serrata and Viburnum dilatatum is worth attention.

Blur-ming (Hong Jin-ah), meaning that no matter how neatly cut, seeds fly and roots cross over, quickly breaking down boundaries, is the garden with the most light among the five. It is richly planted with sun-loving plants like Oenothera biennis and Salvia that bloom until autumn, semi-shade plants such as Solidago, Bergamot, and Houttuynia, and grasses including Setaria, Panicum, and others.

Additionally, Sparkling Between Leaves (Na Jeong-mi and two others), who have accumulated years of experience as urban gardeners and volunteers at Seoul Forest, focused on planting herbaceous plants that reveal their natural colors even under narrow sunlight. Thanks to seasonal sequential blooming and fading of flowers like Aster tataricus 'Jindai' and Heliopsis, visitors can experience a garden that matures over time.

The final awards ceremony for the competition is scheduled for November. The grand prize winner (individual or team) will receive the Seoul Mayor's Award and a prize of 5 million KRW, while gold, silver, and bronze prizes totaling 10 million KRW will also be awarded.

Han Jeong-hoon, director of Seoul Botanic Park, said, "Discovering elements tailored to the competition theme in each work and exploring new planting techniques and species will be good points for learning about and appreciating plants," adding, "I hope the planting design competition gardens, which inspired and energized many citizens last year, will also help overcome COVID-19 blues and fatigue this year."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.