Gardens and flowers in South Korea

When I arrived in Korea in April, just after winter, there was little greenery. The trees were mostly brown and lifeless looking, but when I left the whole scene had changed. Lush green foliage on trees, the ground cover green with various grasses, and in the fields the new rice crops were like a painting of green - pale green, dark green, bright green.

In the cities the pots that had been planted with annuals were showing their blooms, petunias, poppies, penta's, and so forth. Great splashes of colour everywhere. Hanging baskets of petunias from power poles, dotted the streetscapes.

In some places there was a lot of colour. I'm always frustrated being in a bus, which makes it very hard to take good photos, but I managed some out of the window of my bus from Incheon to Seoul.

One of the other features was the climbing plants that covered the entrance to bridges, or wrapped around dreary cement columns.

In some places, especially traffic intersections which were often surrounded by lawned areas, there were amazing plots of colour, just like this one above.

Hard workers

We often comment at the old men and women who work in the gardens of the college. Many of them do regular maintenance and pruning of the hedges and other plants, and they are forever doing things. Many of them are well beyond retirement age - but choose to keep working doing what they love doing. Gardening, odd jobs, carting small items. Retirement for them means boredom!

They have a small plot next to our apartment block, where they cultivate plants especially the many pots that decorate the college. They display the pots near the main entrance, near the West Gate, and in strategic places around the college. I've mentioned the pansies and cinerarias.

As well some of them help clear away the rubbish, (and there is plenty of that when you have so many students and staff) and one elderly gentleman carries our heavy water bottles up to our rooms - for a fee of 1 Yuan. (about 15 cents), and we marvel at him. He's quite a character. Doesn't speak English but always greets us.

We see other men with small carts operating in the college grounds, and some pull carts that look like a horse should be pulling them. There is a constant flow of workers - pulling or pushing one cart or another.

Vegetable growing in the suburbs

Rocky vegetable garden.

The farmers or vegetable growers are resourceful here in China. The above photo shows part of the gardens near here where men tend their vegetable patches. It looks to be an old construction site - perhaps there was an old factory, or old dwellings on the site in the past. It is full of stones, but midst the reclaimed bits and pieces there is a thriving vegetable garden. The product is probably sold at a local market.

Beside our apartment is a canal. Filled with water. On the edges, gardeners have brought in rubble - old bricks, stones etc and built it up so that they can grow small vegetables here. I have seen an old man in a wooden boat, laiden with rubble, come and create a vegetable patch, where there was none before.

There is a special benefit to the gardens along the edge of the canal. There is plenty of water, and I've seen one of the women gardeners use her paddle/oar from her boat to push water up onto the growing plants.

There is a downside to this style of gardening. Once or twice a year the government workers empty the canal to clean it. And all the gardens are removed. Hardly a week or so after the canal is again flowing with water, the resilient gardeners are back with their rubble to rebuild.

Below is another view of the vegetable gardens - you might note people doing their washing in the canal.

Vegetables growing beside the canal.