KOREAN NET

Visitors to this year's Seoul International Garden Show on May 16 look around at the event's venue of Ttukseom Hangang River Park in Seoul's Gwangjin-gu District. (Yonhap News)

By Yoo Yeon Gyeong

Ttukseom Hangang River Park, which covers nearly 200,000 square m, will serve as a public garden through fall.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government on May 16 announced the launch of this year's Seoul International Garden Show to run through Oct. 8 at Ttukseom Hangang River Park in the city's Gwangjin-gu District. The latest edition features the longest period in the show's history to display the garden's seasonal changes.

Under the theme "Seoul, Green Vibe," the show as its core objective offers leisure spaces where the Hangang and the garden blend together. This is the first time that the event has the river as the backdrop.

Covering a combined 10,460 square m, the show features 76 gardens cultivated by domestic and foreign garden specialists, businesses, organizations, students, and people from home and abroad. Invitation Garden and Designer Garden, which won the city's grand landscape prize for their designers Kim Young-min and Kim Young-chan, will feature Sitting Garden.

The invitation and designer gardens will also display 10 works by teams selected through an international contest.

Visitors can also walk through Student Companion Garden, which was designed by college gardening majors, and Citizen Companion Garden made by the public.

"After a year of preparation, we've arranged a global-class garden expo that the public can enjoy," Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon said at the event's opening ceremony held at the park. "We will definitely make Seoul a garden city."