Grace Garden, a secret forest along a hydrangea pathway

Nowadays, there are places where you can see beautifully manicured gardens at home without having to go to Europe. There are 24 privately owned gardens in South Gyeongsang Province alone one of which Grace Garden run by CEO Sohn Ji-won is the largest in the region. 

Grace Garden, a secret forest along a hydrangea pathway

Grace Garden covers 528,925 square meters and has a total of more than 300,000 hydrangeas and is registered as Private Garden No. 6. The garden began when Sohn’s mother purchased the land for missionary work. Her family had developed and operated a hot spring in Changwon since 1980, and the success of the business led them to look for a site for a mission center in the area and found the current site. After purchasing the land in 2010, she began working on the garden nonstop for 15 years, until a nunnery invited her to buy 300 hydrangeas, and she began planting 30,000 hydrangeas every year for 10 years, growing the garden to over 300,000 hydrangeas. As you enter the garden, blue hydrangeas spread their blooms, metasequoias reach for the sky, and stone walls line the path. Sohn says “The Grace Garden has more than 120 species of plants, 300,000 hydrangeas of all varieties, metasequoia foliage and mossy stone walls. The hydrangeas start blooming in June and peak in late June and early July, but these days you can see them blooming in May. In addition to hydrangeas, there are also irises, double-flowered poppies, raspberries, tricolor, carpenter’s arborvitae, emerald gold, and bibichu. There are also libraries, galleries, churches, waterfalls, and ponds.” 

Grace Garden where the wind and clouds take a break

Sohn says “At Grace Garden, we collect, conserve, research, and educate about plant resources. We also provide visitors with beautiful places to relax, exhibit, and create memories.” The garden is open year-round from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends. Admission is 10,000 won for adults, 6,000 won for children and Goseong-gun residents, and 8,000 won for others, and you can get a free drink at the forest cafe with your admission ticket. It takes about 1 hour and 40 minutes to walk around the gardens, and there are light walking trails as well as deep forest trails. When it opened in June 2020, more than 20,000 tourists visited, 70,000 last year, and more than 100,000 this year. However, the road to Grace Garden is narrow, so during the hydrangea bloom season, a shuttle bus operates from a parking lot five minutes away from the garden.

Sohn says “Like the changing colors of the seasons, I look forward to what the garden will bring in the summer and how it will be filled with the scent of violets and peonies when spring arrives after winter.” Sohn wants visitors’ time in the garden to be the happiest moment of their lives, so she tends to it every day.