Sejong City to Create Five Resident-Participatory 'Urban Gardens'

Selected for this year's Korea Forest Service contest 'Jeongwon Dream Project'
Garden creation plan led by youth in garden-related fields
After creation, local residents participate in garden management

Sejong City is creating an ‘urban garden’ managed directly by local residents.

On the 1st, Sejong City announced that it was selected for the ‘2024 Garden Field Practice and Nurturing Space Creation Project (hereinafter referred to as the Garden Dream Project)’ organized by the Korea Forest Service.

According to the selection results, Sejong City will receive 380 million KRW in national funding to create five gardens within the city. The Garden Dream Project is a program promoted by the Korea Forest Service to cultivate practical skills of garden-related majors and expand the garden infrastructure.

In the Garden Dream Project, Sejong City is responsible for discovering and providing idle land, post-maintenance, and recruiting citizen gardeners, while the Korea National Arboretum Garden Management Institute oversees overall project management and monitoring.

Sejong City plans to publicly recruit participating teams for the practice gardens and regional execution organizations by March, conduct training, and officially start the Garden Dream Project from April.

The call for applications allows university students and youth seeking employment or entrepreneurship in garden-related fields to form teams and participate. Selected teams will receive mentoring from garden artists and will be directly responsible for garden design, planning, and creation.

The completed urban gardens will be managed by the participating teams, citizen gardeners, and local residents. This is a public-private-academic collaborative project where urban garden creation, operation, and management are carried out together.

The Garden Dream Project can be maintained for up to three years depending on participation. If the project is carried out for three consecutive years (selected), up to 1.13 billion KRW in national funding can be received to create 15 urban gardens.

Sejong City plans to expand candidate sites for urban garden creation to include eup and myeon areas, aiming to sustain the Garden Dream Project as a continuous project in the region for three years.

Mayor Choi Min-ho of Sejong City said, “We will do our best to ensure smooth project implementation so that participation in the Garden Dream Project becomes an opportunity to provide another beautiful garden for local residents.”

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