Daejeon City Selected for 'Garden Dream Project' Two Years in a Row

Forest Service-led Public-Private-Academic Collaboration Project
Selected for Two Consecutive Years Including Last Year

Daejeon City announced on the 31st that five sites in the Jung-gu area (Munhwa-dong and Mok-dong) have been finally selected for the ‘2024 Garden Dream Project’ led by the Korea Forest Service, securing 375 million KRW in national funding.

The Garden Dream Project, which started in 2020, is a practical garden project where university students majoring in gardening and young people seeking employment or starting businesses form teams to directly carry out everything from garden design to planning and creation using idle land provided by local governments.

The created gardens are jointly managed by students, citizen gardeners, and local residents, making it a ‘nationwide participatory garden creation project’ and a model case of public-private-academic collaboration.

Daejeon has been listed as a project site for two consecutive years, including last year. Last year, five sites in the Seo-gu area (Galma-dong, Doan-dong, and Gwanjeo-dong) were selected as project sites in Daejeon.

This year, five local governments nationwide are participating in the project. Earlier, the Korea Forest Service selected the final project sites through a first-round document evaluation (December last year) and an on-site evaluation this month.

In December last year, Daejeon City also completed the ‘Daejeon City Garden Promotion Implementation Plan Establishment Service’ based on the national plan, the ‘Korea Forest Service’s 2nd Basic Plan for Garden Promotion,’ to expand garden infrastructure, promote garden culture, and foster the garden industry.

Lee Jang-woo, Mayor of Daejeon, said, “We will continue to expand garden infrastructure within urban living areas,” adding, “We will actively participate in discovering national projects from central government ministries to create ‘Daejeon, a first-class economic city thriving through gardens.’”