The Garden Project Kicks off First Pilot Program in Korea

A pilot program taking cue from the “therapeutic gardening” has been unveiled in Korea. (image: The Garden Project)

SEOUL, June 16 (Korea Bizwire) – The Garden Project — urban agriculture and the local food movement aimed at providing healing and educational programs — will be cultivated in earnest in Korea.

The Garden Project announced last week that the world’s famous “garden project” will be up and running across the nation after four years of preparation to introduce the program. The organization had begun the first program for patients with Alzheimer’s on April 18.

The project was intended to help people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease while supplying fresh chemicals-free produce to local communities and educating youths — who are exposed to high levels of fast food and sugary diet — the importance of eating healthy and local foods.

Given the symbolic importance of the first such program in Korea, the Garden Project picked the rooftop garden of the Korea Polio Association building in eastern Seoul as the site of cultivation. Gardening lessons for healing purposes have been held every Friday at 3 pm. Anyone who comes to the daycare center in the building can participate in the program, with professional gardener-therapists in attendance.

※ The Rooftop Garden Project (of Montreal)

The Rooftop Garden Project is built on the recognition that communities all over the world face many similar challenges including food security, climate change, and difficult inner-city living conditions. The Garden Project is committed to promoting food security – the availability of enough healthy, local food for everyone, regardless of economic circumstances. The Rooftop Garden Project has become a model of community-involved, sustainable urban agriculture, demonstrating urban sustainability practices like vermicomposting, vertical planting for small urban spaces and micro-green cultivation. This Montreal initiative stands in a league all of its own; much of the produce grown in its urban gardens is donated to help local community groups offer services to the disenfranchised in Montreal. (Wikipedia)

Park Kyung-bok, president of the Garden Project and also a doctorate in landscape architecture, said, “Beginning in 2010 as a pilot program for urban farming sponsored by the Seoul City Government, it has focused on creating hardware for widespread urban farming initiatives throughout the city.”

He added “But now we are shifting gear and strengthen the software aspect of it so that we could offer mind-healing programs for senior citizens, children, and the handicapped.”

The Garden Project had been selected as a private-sector operator for urban farming for the year 2014 by the city government, with the agreement signed on March 25 this year. A social enterprise, the Garden Project is specializing in projects such as urban forest creation, rainwater conservation, and urban farming.