We’ve seen our fair share of landscaped gardens in Asia – but the Spirited Garden in Jeju is special: it is particularly known for its large collection of bonsai trees. The park is the passion project of Korean Seong Beom-yeong, who in 1969 created a garden from his love of flora. The gentleman today is probably in his 80s, but is still the director of the garden, and we even bumped into him as he was going about giving instructions to his staff.
The grounds include ponds, stone paths, and carefully arranged plantings. Many of the bonsai have been cultivated over several decades. The garden is thoughtfully designed and quite peaceful to walk through. From online photos of the garden, I’d expected the park to be crowded with visitors, but on this early afternoon visit, there were maybe just 2-3 other visitors roaming the garden. We pretty much had whole sections of Spirited Garden to ourselves during this visit.
Continued in the next post!