Jeju, VEKE

“VEKE” in Seogwipo, Jeju, is a cafe. But it is also a wide-open garden. It is a popular destination among visitors traveling to Jeju, thanks to its beautiful landscaping features. During peak hours, it is extremely hard to find empty seats. “VEKE,” which most people assume is English is in fact, a word originated from the Jeju dialect. It refers to small mounds of rocks farmers would pile up back in the days when they used to weed out rocks from the ground using hand plows. The land where cafe “VEKE” stands today used to be a mandarin orchard. The orchard had a fairly large veke. Instead of removing it, the owners decided to build a garden around it and named the structure “VEKE.” Kim Bong-chan, CEO of “The Garden” and founder of “VEKE,” is a landscaping expert who focuses on botany and ecology in creating sustainable, naturalistic gardens.

Most recently, Kim led the “Amore Seongsu” project, which opened last year. He transformed an old auto mechanic’s garage in Seongsudong that was full of lifeless gray shades into an almost forest-like venue filled with nature, tucked away from modern civilization. Similar to “Amore Seongsu,” “VEKE” aspires to be a naturalistic and ecological garden. “VEKE” was built based on Kim’s experience in the ecological field and the spatial design of installation artist Choi Jeong-hwa. Featuring welcome garden, stone wall garden, fern garden, rainwater garden, moss garden, shade garden, magnolia and rhododendron garden, and the ruins garden, a light stroll through “VEKE” is enough to give every visitor a dramatic and diverse experience. If you follow the small signpost and step inside “VEKE,” just beyond a modest rock wall, you will come across a cozy-looking garden that might remind you of fields in the wild. The garden is full of flowers with names you probably would have never heard of before, and few dried up brown trees can also be seen waiting for the next season. Various plants with different life cycles coexist harmoniously in the garden. When you pass through a narrow passageway and enter the building, you will see a green garden outside a wide window similar to a wide-screen movie.

This garden has black stones piled up in the shape of a small hill and an exquisite variety of different lines and colors created by a combination of moss, fern, and trees. To give visitors a better view of the garden, the café floor is sunken into the ground. If you head outside, you get to walk into a wide-open space filled with a number of different plants. As you walk along the little trail across the garden, you will be surprised by its scenery. At every turn, you can expect to see something new. “A garden is a place that needs to be beautiful in harmony with its surroundings. A real garden makes animals, people, and buildings around it beautiful. No matter how expensive and wonderful a tree is, no matter how marvelous a pond is, if they fail to blend in with the things around them, they will never be anything more than man-made installations. I want to study nature and create a garden that reminds us of why we were born on this earth.” Just like Kim’s words, “VEKE” was a place to study nature and further immerse myself in the cosmic energy flowing through the cycle of life and death. What are we doing on this pale blue planet? Just like the wildflowers blooming on the pile of black stones, “VEKE” stood there with all the serenity in the world