Choansan Ttukttak Playground Wins Excellence Prize in Landscape Award Category; Choansan Gardening Center and Dobong 2-dong Volunteer Camp Take Encouragement and Sprout Prizes in Garden City Award

Landscape Award winners
Landscape Award winners

Dobong-gu in Seoul swept three categories at an award ceremony hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government for landscape and garden design, earning recognition for its outstanding urban scenery and citizen-led greening efforts.

The district said it received the Excellence Prize in the Landscape Award category, along with the Encouragement Prize and the Sprout Prize in the Garden City Award category, at the "2026 Seoul Landscape Award and Garden City Award Ceremony" held Monday on the eighth floor of Seoul City Hall.

Dobong-gu's Ttukttak Playground won the Excellence Prize at the Seoul Landscape Award, which recognizes outstanding spaces that improve urban scenery aesthetically, functionally and ecologically.

The playground first opened in 2017 and was renovated in 2025 under the theme "A Secret Forest Playground Made With Goblin Friends."

Making use of Choansan's abundant forest resources and terrain, the playground was designed around six "goblin friend" characters who interact with children to stimulate creativity and emotional development.

Rather than a simple facility-centered playground, the space is designed for play-based learning where children cooperate and learn together in nature, and it also runs various reservation-based programs led by professional play instructors.

Two teams from Dobong-gu were recognized at the Seoul Garden City Award, which evaluates outstanding cases of citizens planting and tending flowers and trees.

The Choansan Gardening Center received the Encouragement Prize, marking a consecutive win after taking the Grand Prize in the Seoul Landscape Award the previous year. This year's honor recognized the excellence of its citizen-led maintenance efforts.

Opened in May 2023, the Choansan Gardening Center offers a resident rest area, an open terrace and a high-quality garden space, and runs a variety of garden programs and exhibitions.

Notably, through its "Neighborhood Gardener" program, in which citizens participate directly, and through collaboration with garden experts and educational institutions such as Seoul Women's University, the center has led efforts to spread a community garden culture that brings together generations.

The Dobong 2-dong Volunteer Camp, in which residents transformed an unused lot in front of Dobong Forest Daycare Center (684-10 Madeul-ro, Dobong-gu) into a garden, won the Sprout Prize.

The award recognized how residents voluntarily planted flowers and trees and consistently maintained them, improving the local living environment.

"We will keep working to improve the urban landscape and expand a citizen-led culture of urban greening, so that residents can experience a more vibrant cityscape," said Dobong-gu District Mayor Kim Dong-uk.


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