Beautiful lotus garden that purifies your mind

Poet Jeong Ho-seung sympathetically depicted a crowd viewing lotus flowers in a garden in his poem:

“When lotus flower blooms,/ the moon, stars, and birds, watching the flowers,/ also bloom as lotus flowers.// It is only the people who gather around lotus flowers, failed to bloom lotus flowers, eat their lunch, smoke their cigarettes, or think of the money due to them."

Korean people have believed that to properly appreciate lotus flowers, they need to cleanse their minds first. So, the road leading to Semiwon is paved with stone washboards. Following this road named "Sesim-ro," which means "a road where you wash your minds," people cleanse their negative thoughts and emotions watching the placid Hangang River.

Semiwon has a lotus garden exhibiting various water lilies from all over the world, such as the white lotus, the red lotus, and Victoria water lilies armed with thorns. There is also a pond for the flowers donated by Perry Slocum, a renowned lotus and water lily researcher. Other facilities include Sehanjeong, a garden inspired by the drawing Sehando by Chusa Kim Jeong-hui, a calligrapher and painter of the late Joseon Dynasty; and Sangchunwon, an exhibition greenhouse modeled on the pavilions and gardens of the Goryeo and Joseon Dynasties.

Dumulmeori and Semiwon are connected by a pontoon bridge. It is a bridge made by assembling 52 boats and then placing boards on them. It reproduces the bridge designed by Dasan Jeong Yak-yong in 1789 for King Jeongjo when he crossed the Hangang River to visit the tomb of his father, Crown Prince Sado.

Zhou Dunyi, a Confucian scholar of the Northern Song Dynasty, likened the lotus flower to a virtuous man. The lotus blooms in the mud, but its fragrance deepens as it moves away farther, and its strong stem that supports the flower reveals its presence only when viewed from afar. How do these lotus flowers find human beings?

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