Korea's first hotel private garden, winner of global design awards, anchors a Jeju retreat where nature, cuisine and ocean converge

The entrance to Lotte Hotel Jeju. [Provided by Lotte Hotel]
The entrance to Lotte Hotel Jeju. [Provided by Lotte Hotel]

A 10-minute drive from Lotte Sky Hill CC Jeju brings you to Jungmun Tourism Complex, where striking natural scenery and resort facilities cluster along the island's southern coast.

The first thing to stop you in your tracks is Lotte Hotel Jeju's Wonssaeng Garden — a green sanctuary unveiled in September 2022 after a year of renovation. Drawing its inspiration from gotjawal, Jeju's ancient indigenous forest, the garden opens onto a sweeping vista stretching from the treeline to the shore, a panorama only Jeju can offer.

"Got" is a pure Jeju word for forest; "jawal" means thorny scrubland. Together they describe a primeval woodland of tangled rock and brush found nowhere else on earth — an ecosystem unique to Jeju. Rather than taming the wild, Wonssaeng Garden transplants the raw texture of gotjawal into the hotel grounds, preserving the untamed grain of the forest intact.

Jeju's sense of time settles over you from the entrance. Stone walls wind between bright blooms, stacked by hand by traditional stone-wall craftsmen and hotel staff following the island's age-old building methods. Wind passes through the gaps between the stones — a reminder that Jeju's walls are not built to block the wind but to breathe alongside it. The deeper you walk, the denser the canopy becomes, as carefully chosen trees shade the path overhead.

Light filters through the leaves and traces shifting patterns across the walkway below. Simply walking here is enough to feel the temperature drop.

Midway along the path, a water feature called Mirror Pond waits in stillness. By day, its surface reflects Jeju's sky and forest in precise detail — clouds drift across the water as they pass overhead, and when the wind picks up, sky and trees blur together until the boundary between them disappears. After dark, the pond takes on a different character: lights placed around the garden scatter across the water like stars, making it impossible to tell the heavens from the reflection below. The same pond shows two entirely different worlds within a single day.

In June 2024, Wonssaeng Garden became the first hotel garden in South Korea to be designated a private garden by the Korea Forest Service — the only hotel among 150 such gardens nationwide to earn the distinction. International recognition followed. The garden won the main prize in the product design category at Germany's Red Dot Design Award 2024 and, in a first for Korean hotel landscaping, took the main prize in the environmental category at the US IDEA 2024. It also received a silver prize at the Good Design Korea Award 2023.

Before the afterglow of the garden fades, the restaurant La Seine beckons. The upscale buffet brings together culinary traditions from around the world, with the horizon stretched long and flat beyond the windows — your eyes keep drifting to the sea even as you settle into your seat with a plate in hand.

The breakfast buffet opens at 7 a.m., offering traditional Korean porridge and soup alongside a made-to-order omelette station and a bakery counter. The signature dish is eggs Benedict: a precisely poached egg balanced against a well-judged sauce that makes for a memorable first bite of the morning. Press a knife into it and the yolk runs slowly.

A walk through the garden, a meal with the ocean in view — the day rounds itself off naturally. A morning that began on the golf course in Seogwipo passes through garden and table before returning, ultimately, to the sea. Wherever a day in Jeju starts, it ends at the water's edge. The sound of the waves, and whatever sweet dreams it brings, is simply a bonus.


andy@heraldcorp.com