Exhibition Greenhouse, Seoul Grand Park Botanical Garden (서울대공원 식물원 전시온실)

The greenhouse's story begins at Changgyeonggung Palace in Seoul, where the Japanese authorities had installed a zoo, opened on 1 November 1909, and a botanical garden, the whole becoming known as Changgyeongwon. In 1983 the zoo and botanical garden left the palace for a new park laid out on the slopes of Mount Cheonggye in Gwacheon, south of Seoul. The zoo opened there on 1 May 1984 and the Seoul Grand Park Botanical Garden followed in 1985; some of its plants came directly from Changgyeongwon.

The garden, which the park describes as the first public arboretum created in Korea, has grown over the decades: a herbarium exhibition hall opened in 2018, and in 2025 the garden was designated a national institution for the conservation of rare and endemic plants.

The exhibition greenhouse, the heart of the garden, closed for three months at the end of 2023 for repairs: corrosion was removed from the main structural members and the peeling paintwork was redone. It reopened on 10 January 2024 with new educational programmes.

The exhibition greenhouse is a large volume 25 metres high covering 2,825 m². Built in 1985, it combines a steel frame with multi-layer glazing, a type of modern greenhouse that the Korean press considered rare by 2024, while recognising its architectural and heritage value.

The interior is divided into five halls with distinct climates: a desert hall, two tropical halls, a temperate forest hall and a carnivorous plant hall. The works completed in January 2024 dealt with the steel structure itself, cleared of corrosion, and with its paintwork, redone wherever it was peeling, so as to extend the life of a building then almost forty years old.

When it reopened in January 2024 the greenhouse displayed 562 species; the official count at 31 December 2023 gives 518 species and 14,426 plants in the exhibition greenhouse. The desert hall shows cacti of strange shapes and varied flowers, while the tropical halls gather foliage plants from many countries; the temperate forest and the carnivorous plant hall complete the route.

Across the whole botanical garden, which covers 229,759 m², the collections then numbered 1,587 species and 168,686 plants, with a rose garden of varieties from around the world, hydrangea beds and a wetland ecology garden outdoors.

The greenhouse stands in the Seoul Grand Park Botanical Garden in Gwacheon, on the slopes of Mount Cheonggye. Allow about an hour for the five halls; the garden runs educational programmes, including audio-guided tours accessed by QR code.

The visit combines well with the rose garden and the wetland garden, then with the Seoul Grand Park zoo, successor to the one at Changgyeongwon. To trace the story back to its origins, continue to Changgyeonggung Palace in Seoul and its great greenhouse of 1909, which stayed in place when the collections left.