The district claimed a grand prize and two encouragement awards at the 14th Seoul Metropolitan Garden City Awards, recognizing its resident-led garden culture. The grand prize went to "Five Minutes of Leisure," a garden island above the Deungchon underpass built and maintained entirely by local volunteers.
Yangcheon-gu swept three awards at the 14th Seoul Metropolitan Garden City Awards, earning recognition for the resident-driven garden culture it has built under its "Garden City Yangcheon" initiative.
The grand prize went to "Five Minutes of Leisure," a garden island above the Deungchon underpass created by second- and third-cohort members of the Yangcheon Garden Volunteer Corps. The Sinwol 4-dong Yangcheon Garden Volunteer Corps and "Galsan Aria," a neighborhood garden club near Galsan Library, each received an encouragement award.
The Seoul Metropolitan Garden City Awards, now in its 14th year, were presented Sunday. The city established the awards to promote a garden culture in which residents plant and tend flowers and trees as part of everyday life, and to recognize outstanding greening efforts. This year's judging weighed not only the visual quality of each garden but also resident participation, community building, ongoing maintenance, and the broader changes each project brought to its neighborhood.
The grand prize winner, "Five Minutes of Leisure," is a garden island above the Deungchon underpass where volunteer corps members put into practice what they learned through garden education — selecting, arranging, and planting vegetation and designing the overall layout themselves. They have continued to tend the space after its completion, carrying out seasonal plant care and replanting as needed.
Particularly notable is the garden's use of a roughly 15-degree slope: tiered planting was designed with pedestrian sightlines and foot traffic in mind, creating a living garden where commuters can pause during a busy day. Judges praised the project as a model for sustainable community-led garden management, with residents involved in every stage from site selection to ongoing upkeep.
The Sinwol 4-dong Yangcheon Garden Volunteer Corps, one of the encouragement award winners, was the first volunteer corps Yangcheon-gu trained at the neighborhood level last year. After completing four weeks of garden management education, residents supplemented the planting to suit seasonal conditions and the local growing environment. The award recognized that the project did not end as a one-time effort — residents have continued to shape and improve the garden together.
The other encouragement award winner, Galsan Aria, transformed an underused rooftop space at Galsan Library into a shared community garden. Nearby residents came together voluntarily to build the garden and have since maintained it on their own, linking their activities to the library's cultural programs to manage plants and keep the space in order. The project was cited as a model shared garden that turned idle public-facility space into a cultural venue for neighborhood exchange and community activity.
The award-winning works will be featured in the 2026 Seoul Metropolitan Landscape and Garden City Awards collection, available on the Garden City Seoul website. A special exhibition, "Forest Garden Archive," showcasing the 23 Garden City Award winners and other works, runs through Sunday at the Clio Exhibition Hall at Seoul Forest.
The district is pressing ahead with its "Garden City Yangcheon" vision — a goal of placing a garden within a five-minute walk of every resident — by creating 1,004 themed gardens across the urban area. To date, 343 gardens covering approximately 45,740 square meters have been established. Alongside expanding the number of gardens, the district is leading the spread of a participatory garden culture in which residents grow and maintain the spaces themselves. Programs including the Yangcheon Garden Volunteer Corps, which pairs garden education with volunteer activities, the Anyangcheon resident participation garden initiative "Y Gardening Crew," and neighborhood-level garden volunteer corps are extending that culture throughout the community.
"This award is all the more meaningful because it reflects the achievements of 'Garden City Yangcheon,' which residents have built by learning, tending gardens, and working together," District Mayor Lee Gi-jae said. "We will continue to create 1,004 themed gardens throughout residential areas while expanding opportunities for residents to take the lead in garden culture, so that everyone can enjoy flowers, trees, and the changing seasons close to home."
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