Suncheon Bay Garden Expo draws limelight, tourists

A general view of the site for 2013 Suncheon Bay Garden Expo

By Kim Ji-soo

The works of British horticulturalist Charles Jencks and Korea’s Hwang Ji-hae will grace the main pavilion at the 2013 Suncheon Bay Garden Expo that will open on April 20 near the wetlands in the southwestern South Jeolla Province.

Suncheon Bay is the widest reed bed in Korea and one of the world’s top-five coastal wetlands. It is home to about 200 types of migrant birds and 120 types of salt plants. With 25 rare species of birds including hooded cranes and black-headed gulls residing in the area, Suncheon Bay was enlisted under the RAMSAR Convention as protected wetlands in 2006. It was declared a protected wetland on the Korean Peninsula in 2003 and joined the International Network for the Protection of the Hooded Crane Species of North-East Asia in 2004.

Its environmental value has attracted the limelight and tourists to the wetlands where an annual 2.5 million visitors flock to the area.

“The large number of tourists in the wetlands ironically prompted a need to sustainably protect the wetlands. So, the expo is intended to provide a park in the city center so that the number of visitors will be retained without damaging the wetlands,” said Park Sang-jin, a PR official with the organizing committee for the 2013 Suncheon Bay Expo. The expo site would in effect work as a buffer zone between the bay and the city center that is separated by only five kilometers.

The southwestern city of Suncheon, 415 kilometers from Seoul, was voted as the venue for the expo in 2009 at the International Organization of Horticulture Producers’ assembly meeting held in Spain

With the expo expected to begin in April to run six months through Oct. 20, Jencks has designed the main thematic area dubbed “Suncheon Lake.” Hwang, an environmental artist will design a garden titled “A Lugworm’s Path.” Hwang achieved a rare feat of winning twice at the UK Chelsea Flower Show, a gold medal for “Hae Woo-so” (which literally means place to ease concern, referring to a toilet) in 2011 and for “Quiet Time: DMZ Forbidden Garden” in 2012. In addition, 11 country-themed gardens ranging from gardens of Netherlands, China and the United States will be created in the main expo area.

Additional facilities of an inland wetlands center and a tree garden will be created on a sprawl of 3,669 square meters.

“About 23 nations have confirmed that they will take part in the expo,” Park said, modeled after the eco-cities of Germany’s Freiburg and Brazil’s Curitiba.

The structures from the expo will not be one-time edifices, but remain for public use even after the expo’s end.

The expo is mainly led by the Korea Forest Service, South Jeolla Provincial Government and Suncheon City.