Seoul Botanic Park Tour

What's up guys and welcome back to Tech Planet. Today we are at the Seoul Botanic Park. Let's check it out. This is going to be a pretty darn awesome video because honestly when I first saw this online I really thought it was going to be small and there wouldn't be much to do but I was surprised at how many things they have here besides just the actual conservatory. It's amazing so let's get to it. Now where I'm sitting at in that first intro was actually just the coffee shop which is awesome. I know some other local ones near me in the U.S. are trying to do something cool like this but I think they blew this out of the water. I mean look at how awesome these great tables are that you can sit around with these really cool desert scapes. It's absolutely awesome and really feels cool for just a coffee shop. Also if you've never been a part of a high trust society it's pretty amazing because people can just literally plug their phones in here to charge and leave them there for like an hour or two and no one will steal them. It's supreme. You could never do this in the U.S.A. Your stuff would be gone in like minutes but anyways back to the Because this was built in the last few years it's really modern and they really thought things out. One thing I don't like about my local conservatory is you can basically walk through it in like 25 minutes and there's just nothing else to do so you just go home but this one has a cool little waiting area where you can chill, read books, chit-chat for a while, the kids can play and it has a really awesome living wall. And once you go a little bit away from that they have a lot of educational material which again is fantastic. I tried pitching this to my local conservatory but it just like I couldn't get anywhere with it but anyways they have a full-on like hydroponic setup and they've got some like posters and stuff that really explain the process and this stuff is really cool because a lot of kids I'm sure take field trips here or if anything it just exposes these kind of technologies to the public and it's fantastic to see. I really love this kind of stuff and it really introduces this stuff to people who would never know about it otherwise. They also had a bunch of different types of like terrariums, polydariums, vivariums, aquariums and they just had each one labeled in a description of like what it really is and again I love all this stuff that's introduced to the public because if you don't know about something how can you become passionate about it. Sort of near this area again another really cool feature is they had an entire seed library and you could actually get seeds from this place. Obviously I didn't try to just because I already had plans to bring stuff across the border and I didn't want to complicate things and that'll be a whole another video about kind of how I failed and how you can not fail but anyways it was really set up nicely again more like information in posters about like what a seed is how they grow the different botanical parts just really cool educational content that I feel like a lot of these places are missing and it was just really nicely set up again with another one of these living walls and it's just really cool to see like once a modern conservatory is built all the little like amenities I guess I don't know what you call this sorry but just all the little things they can include in to make this much more than just like looking at plants so I thought it was all really tremendous and basically one more thing before we actually get to the plants I'm sure you guys are getting pretty annoyed with me but I just want to show you like what a modern conservatory can be they had a dedicated library and every single book in here is about plants or something very similar to growing plants whether it's farming bonsai terrariums like everything there was just tons of books in here it's just better than any like library section that I have in the US like available to me usually it's like a shelf with some like plant books on it but this is shelf after shelf after shelf they even had some English books and again another living wall so it's like no matter where you go you're like confronted with plants and the beauty of them and then there's all this different reading material that you can use to study about these things and like I said the collection was pretty darn fast and just again a fantastic thing to go do at a conservatory so you can actually spend a day here they did have some art exhibition there was some other stuff there was kids educational stuff like on the actual grounds and there is an entire outdoor area and a rooftop but that's just already we're getting to be too much for the video so you're going to have to check this thing out yourself if you're ever in Seoul but let's get to the actual plants this structure is sort of like two halves of one giant circle and the first half is all the tropical stuff and then from there it's more of like a temperate not arid I'm not really it's kind of cactusy but also kind of like something you would see in Spain it's hard to describe but you'll see that soon again another really cool thing that they have is these like little waiting rooms that aren't as hot and humid they're a little more temperature controlled and it's perfect for families who kind of need a rest like this was really good for me because I always feel bad for my wife and kids because they were here and so it's like I dragged them around and no one wants to sit in like the hot humid stuff just like waiting for their bum husband to get done doing whatever they're doing so it was cool that they have this even elderly people are just anyone who wants to sit down and take a break while somebody else enjoys all the plants if they're a little slower like me it's just again another fantastic thoughtful thing and I love seeing this stuff and how they've kind of put the modern twist on a conservatory so once you kind of get into the main actual area there is a lot of potted plants and then there is like the actual like almost landscape conservatory it's really cool they've made some like false rock formations there's like water features and then they also do have like a huge like catwalk through the whole place so once you finish you basically go up to the catwalk and then you exit through that so it's again really cool laid out but they have a lot of different cool plants here monstera tie constellation they had some like variegated rubber trees a lot of different philodendrons even some pothos that's growing out really nicely here so things are looking pretty good and they have a decent mix of like random little hybrids or cultivars versus like actual species so you really get a good variety of stuff because I know some conservatories really only want like species in there and then they kind of shy away from some of the more like collectible cultivars but here they had a really solid mix of everything pretty soon into the actual tour you are greeted with this little waterfall sort of cave like structure with a big cutout in the top so light gets in there and they really pack everything with plants there are epiphytes everywhere there's orchids everywhere there's like ferns staghorn ferns hanging plants I mean they've just got stuff plastered all over the place and it really makes everything very lush and full like nothing feels empty at all like they utilize all the space very well and it makes for just really cool scenery another thing I noticed compared to some of the ones I've been is just the sheer amount of orchids they have everywhere and they have a lot of them in flower maybe we just got lucky with the time of year I'm not sure but I only saw like one more like industrial greenhouse outside of the grounds where I'm sure they grow some of this stuff but I'm not really sure maybe everything is just here if you do look deeper into like the forest so to speak you'll see a lot of potted stuff like off to the side so maybe they cycle things out that way but again there are just orchids everywhere in this area there's not a single like place where there just aren't like there you'll see as we go through they're just always everywhere and I really love it because orchids are one of my favorites and they just have such a wide variety of them this is definitely a plant that's on my wish list I love ant plants but they're kind of hard to find and they're a little expensive because I think they are a little niche it would be really cool to have an ant enclosure where they would actually utilize it because what these are there's like little caverns and caves inside that big like tuber looking thing and ants like take up their houses in there and it's pretty neat since I'm also a huge fan of anthuriums on top of orchids I was really looking out for them but a lot of them were in like really weird areas where they're sort of buried like here is like a king anthurium or like the vietji or whatever just kind of like hanging out I don't know it's just interesting when you are walking through here you really got to pay attention like what's deeper back into like the forest so to speak because again there's a lot of colorful stuff and it's it the paths don't get quite over there so you really can spend some time like looking deep into it and you'll see a lot of really interesting stuff this one section especially had a lot of different like red colorful plants and I really like this one like modeled one it was just really it was just cool to see if you take your time you can see quite a lot of different stuff as of just like looking at the like direct path stuff once you get to that section though you are greeted by like a really large pond water feature and this is where they have a ton of carnivorous plants as well as like orchids and really neat planters and it was just a really like pretty scene a lot of the carnivorous plants they covered I think most of like the little I don't know if they're really not families but species I guess there's sundews there's pitcher plants I can't even pronounce some of the names of these but they had a nice variety and a nice cluster of each of them so you can really get an idea of what all these different species look like and then there were fish in here as well they had a giant pleco I saw in there and a bunch of other little fish swimming around so again just a nice like serene scene with a very large variety of plants again here's a great example of what I mean how they just jam pack everything in there so you just you can just the more you stare the more you see just look at this scene here and there's just tons of plants just when you think you've seen them all you can see different types of leaves poking through it's just wild it was really awesome how like densely planted everything is because again you can really see a lot and now just as I mentioned that they have such a variety all jam-packed together they also have dedicated sections much like the carnivorous plant section you just saw earlier here we have a bunch of bromeliads and air plants where they really just show you a certain type of plant and all the varieties in one spot so you can really appreciate the actual variance that comes with any certain like uh what is the genre not genre generic I forget the like taxonomy or whatever but my point is they have like scattered stuff and then they have like dedicated sections which is really neat they have like a nice little like river walks sort of like bridge thing with some nice smoke effects it just gives it like a nice like ambiance I don't even know what word you'd choose but with the little catwalk ahead it really gives a good opportunity for a lot of these hanging plants to drop these roots and again it was really cool and just beautifully laid out off to the right we did see a bunch of different philodendrons and monstera species I think it's a little more shaded which is why it's not so dense here or maybe they're just switching things out I'm not sure because again a lot of conservatories will move stuff around and switch things out I really I've only been here once so I can't really say what they do but just another great scene of amazing plants they have some paths that sort of double back if you don't want to go into the next section so this path right here sort of brings you back to that front of the pond you can do like a full circle and then for you crazy begonia people they did have another like like I said where they have like all the same plant on display here's a ton of really cool begonias and again if you like seeing like different species of a certain plant they have these setups all over now moving on to the actual desert part this one had a good variety of like desert plants cactuses um aloes a bunch of succulents and stuff and they also had a lot of other plants that you would find in these more like arid areas um there's some stuff you'll see a little bit more ahead that really like screams like Spain I'm not really sure if that's what they're going for at least I went to Spain once and it kind of felt like that so again I'm not sure but um it was really fantastic it's much cooler in this area and just the vibes that you get from all these like extra props that they have in here really made a huge difference and I really love this side I didn't take as much footage because by this time my kids were like pretty much toast because we had already been here for a couple hours because like I said there's a bunch of stuff leading up to the actual plants so yeah centrally in this like side they had this really cool courtyard thing and I don't know if you noticed like right in the beginning they almost had like a little Spanish house that people could sit at but here's like a really cool gathering area to take photos it had this beautiful fountain that was so picturesque I can't even describe how amazing it looked I took so many photos of it with my actual camera and took some photos of my wife and kids and like I really want to come back to this place without my kids actually and just my wife in like a beautiful dress and just walk around and photograph her because this whole area was just so pretty I took some like random cell phone pictures and it just looked awesome the way they have this place set up I wish I spent more time here but again we were kind of running out of time it just had such a vibe this is like it made me want to stick around and hang out like I don't know how else to describe like how cool it was and this is what more of these conservatories I think need to start doing where there's an actual reason to like hang out instead of just kind of like sprint through it and go home something I kind of noticed towards the end is I believe because these are big like half circles and maybe they're more modern structures so they can just be bigger it feels so large inside that you don't feel like you're in a greenhouse and I think that's like one of the big differences between this place and like some of the other places I've been to because they're much more obvious that you're just like in a glass building but at times this place just did not feel like it so it really just gave it a different like different feeling I really loved it here's another example where they have just a ton of varieties of a certain type of plant a lot of like what are they called like stone plants like lilithops or whatever but just a good wide variety so you can really see like the variations I love these little displays mixed into like a greater like landscape display it makes for a lot of fun and education all at the same time like I said in the beginning once you get to the end here on the first floor you can take some stairs or an elevator the stairs are really interesting because they're just it's just like it's almost like you're transporting to a different world or something just because of how abstract it is it's kind of weird but when you get to the top you're at that catwalk and then you get to get a whole new perspective of the tropical side and it's just a cool way to like leave so once you come out of this it sort of exits back to the actual like gift shop and all the other stuff I already showed you so it's a cool way to come out instead of just walking like through and then coming out the one end coming back through everything you already saw but from a different perspective was a neat way to sort of end the journey so to speak and so it was a lot of fun and again I really think they designed this whole thing really well coming into this I thought it was going to be just a small little conservatory just because like the pictures on google maps just weren't doing the place justice and I was so excited to see all the different educational stuff the coffee shop they even have an e-mart in this joint they got restaurants they got a food court it's like it's really meant to spend like four or five hours at easily and that's what I love the most about this place and we're not even talking about the outdoor garden it was really early spring so most of it was dead but there's an entire outdoor garden that's really huge that you can walk through so you can spend so much time here which is fantastic because like I said with anything in Wisconsin you can spend about 25 minutes there and you're pretty much done so it was really refreshing to see such a large place with so many cool things to do