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| Garden designer and environmental artist Hwang Ji-hae welcomes the U.K.'s King Charles III to her garden "A Letter from a Million Years Past" at the Chelsea Flower Show in London, Monday. Courtesy of Ollie Dixon |
By Kwak Yeon-soo
A garden inspired by the landscape and ecosystem of Mount Jiri, Korea's largest national park, won a gold medal in the Chelsea Flower Show in London.
"A Letter from a Million Years Past," designed by Hwang Ji-hae, won the gold medal along with four other gardens in the main competition's Show Garden category on Tuesday. The Best in Show award went to "Horatio's Garden" by Harris Bugg Studio.
This is the third time Hwang has grabbed a prize at Chelsea Flower Show, one of the world's most prestigious horticultural events hosted by Britain's Royal Horticultural Society since 1827.
In 2011, Hwang won the Best Artisan Award and the Gold Medal at Chelsea Flower Show with "Hae Woo So: Emptying Your Mind: Traditional Korean Toilet." The following year, she won the President Award and a Gold Medal for exhibiting "Quiet Time: DMZ Forbidden Garden."
"A Letter from a Million Years Past" highlights landscape destruction and raises awareness of the importance of preserving medicinal plants, according to Hwang.
"I'm so delighted that the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) has recognized that my garden is a message about people's respect for the environment; for recognizing that medicinal plants are all around us; and that people are intimately connected with and responsible for the health of our planet," Hwang said after winning the prize.
"I've been away from Chelsea since 2012 and have loved coming back. It is exhausting, stimulating and amazing. Chelsea allows even the smallest voices to be heard and that is hugely powerful. Twelve years ago, when I first came to Chelsea and exhibited a Korean garden, nobody actually knew what that was. Now I finally feel like I've made a foundation of what a Korean garden is in the U.K."
King Charles III and Queen Camilla made a visit to the Chelsea Flower Show on Monday, the day before it opened to the public, and toured the gardens on display. The king granted the garden designer's request for a hug and praised her garden as they sat together in the traditional herb drying tower, the main feature of the healing garden created by Alex Gibbons.
"Thank you for bringing your garden here. I love it. It's brilliant and marvelous," the King told Hwang.
At the end of the show, some of the plants will be donated to Maggie's Centre in Nottingham and other plants may be sold to fundraise for the cancer charity.
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