Boramae in Bloom, Seoul International Garden Show 2025
They were holding the Seoul International Garden Show at Boramae Park. It is one of the larger, better-kept parks in the city, never quite empty, and I wanted to see what a whole season of dressing up had done to it. I took Line 2 to Sindaebang and headed down the station stairs already a little eager.
Into the Park
The park entrance sat right outside the station exit. Banners and signboards announced the show, and even the wall along the road was buried in petunias, purple and pink and red spilling over the brick. It was only the entrance, and already the care showed. First impressions count for a lot, and this one had me at the gate.
Further in, the park kept its ordinary day going under all the decoration. A dog bounded across the grass with its owner trailing behind. Someone power-walked the loop with arms swinging, and someone else sat on a bench by the pond, handing the afternoon over to the willow shade. People who had come for the show and people just out for some air moved through the same space. There is a pull to that kind of ease, and my eyes kept going back to it.
For the show, the park's gardens had been done over too. The old beds were tidied up, and new gardens were set in between them. Some kept the shade under the tall trees, others ringed a small bed with stones. Each one slowed me a step more, and the early-summer light sat easily on the freshly settled scenery.
Haechi on the Lawn
Walking the path through the brush, I saw a pink head rising higher than the trees. Haechi. The moment that big face came into view, my feet turned toward it on their own. In the middle of the lawn, Haechi and its friends were taking turns in photos with whoever came up. Some threw both arms in the air, some flashed a peace sign, every pose different and every face the same kind of bright. It is a strange thing, one big mascot setting this many people smiling, and standing in front of it I felt my own mood lift.
The steps around the lawn were covered in a splendor that hadn't been there before. Roses, trained up the trellises, arched into a red tunnel that people filed in and out of. One panel of blue lattice against the red blooms looked like a garden lifted from somewhere far off in Europe. Stairs I had always climbed without a second look had become, in a single season, something else entirely.
The roses did not stop at one color. Red and pink and white mixed in the same place, painting early summer in a wide palette, and people stopped at the urns packed with blooms to pick out the ripest one. In front of flowers, everyone turns photographer for a minute.
No festival goes without food. Down one side of the lawn the trucks lined up, letting the smell of coffee and fried things loose in the sun. The smell catches you first, and neither the ones who had come from far nor the ones out for a neighborhood walk could quite pass it by, so they lined up one by one. Flowers alone, after all, won't fill a stomach.
A Dog Among the Hydrangeas
Out of the lawn, the first thing to catch my eye was a dog ringed with hydrangeas. A pale pink figure full of small holes, caught mid-leap, the same shade as the flowers, as if it had just sprung out of the heap of them. Hydrangeas of every color, pink and magenta, lavender and blue-violet, swelled together in one place, and the splendor of it was almost too much for the eyes. A single color would have been lovely on its own. Mixed like this, you don't know where to rest your gaze. I couldn't leave for a long while.
Things Along the Path
Further on, daisies grew in clusters everywhere. They had spread past wherever they were planted, filling the blank canvas as they pleased, and the weave of white petals and yellow centers held no excess at all. Even after a stretch of showy roses, this plain flower felt new again.
On one side of the lawn floated the Seoul Minidal, shy about it. It looked like its name, a small round moon, and in the midday light it stayed quiet. Once the sun went down and the dark came on, it would loosen a yellow warmth over the spot. Leaving with only the daytime park, I felt the loss of that evening a little.
The path ran on past one designer's garden after another. Beyond gardens woven from grass and low trees, the city's towers stood faint in the distance. I would forget I was in the middle of Seoul, and then the skyline would remind me. Each garden carried a different hand, and at every move to the next, my feet were slow to leave.
On one side stood a rose tunnel that must have gone up long ago. Not something dressed for the show, but a vine the park had grown for years. Even on its aged branches the red blooms came thick, hanging back-lit between the poplars. Among the freshly made gardens, this old tunnel held its own in another key.
Under the tunnel, fallen petals had laid a pink carpet down the path. A magpie walked across it, unhurried. Even in the middle of a garden people had made, the bird was busy with its own business. That walk, indifferent to flowers and people alike, stayed with me longer than I would have guessed.
A little further on, I stepped into a garden built of stacked stone, and then, out of the gaps between the stones, mist rose from nowhere. A thin fog crept over the dark stones in the shade and spread, and though it was on the way into high summer, this one spot stayed strangely cool. After a path that had filled my eyes with color, it felt like crossing into another sense for a moment.
Even the park cart, parked in the shade, somehow became part of the scene. It meant someone tends all these gardens every day. Once you think the flowers did not open on their own but borrowed somebody's early mornings, you can't look past a single cart. Many different eyes had gathered to fill one park this evenly.
The Metamong Garden
Wandering with no aim, I came on a line of people. Curious, I went over: an arch hung with vines and lanterns, lettered METAMONG GARDEN. After nothing but flowers, running into Pokémon was a small delight. The line moved fast, and before long I was through.
Between the purple hydrangeas, a Ditto sat in every gap. The same lavender as the flowers, they settled right into the bed, big rounded bodies puffed up, each meeting the visitors with a slightly different face. A whole flowerbed had been handed over to Ditto. A cartoon creature dropped into a garden full of flowers, and yet, tied together by that one shade of purple, it did not look out of place at all.
Paw Prints on the Track
On my way out, a small track caught my eye. A path made just for dogs. Yellow paw prints dotted the purple ground and looped around, and somehow I found myself following them a few slow laps.
A park that had set, beside its gardens for people, a place for dogs to run too. Tracing flowers and sculptures and small gardens, I found a whole half-day had slipped by. No need to go anywhere far. A park that had always been right here filled the day on its own, and walking back out, the colors stayed in my eyes a good while.
Reference
Open in Naver Map- Dates: May 22 to November 2, 2025
- Hours: Always open
- Getting there: 10-min walk from Sindaebang Station (Line 2) or Boramae Station (Line 7)
- Official site (opens in new tab)