An Exploration of Crops Listed in Gwanhyuji, an Agricultural Book in the Joseon Dynasty for the Promotion of the Diversity of Urban Gardens

Urban agriculture, which promotes communication in vulnerable classes and the formation of social networks has been gaining attention with an emphasis on healthy city, elderly-friendly city, safe city and happy city as future keywords about urban life. There is a growing interest in public awareness in many areas such as health, society, economy, and ecology. As an attempt to improve the diversity of urban gardens, this study begins with collecting suitable crops for urban gardens from “Imwongyeongjeji (林園經濟志),” an encyclopedia written by Yoo-Ku Seo, a scholar in the 18-19th century. Out of those recorded in “Gwanhyuji (灌畦志),” 128 kinds of crops with linkage of the historical achievements of the realists who gave their priority to public welfare were selected and 53 crops which had traditionality, historicality, health functionality and popularity were finally selected. The properties (cold, warm, clam) of the selected crops were evenly distributed, and there was no crop that was hot and cool. In addition, the number of crops that have a sweet taste was the highest, followed by spicy and bitter, but there was no salty vegetable, which can be attributed to the fact that 12 namuls (wild vegetables) that grow in seas were excluded in this study since they were not suitable for urban gardens. Urban gardens can be transformed from those that focus on primary production and secondary consumption activities into a new resource that offers educational and traditional values by applying humanities to urban agriculture as a content resource in the era of cultural consilience and convergence. It is expected to satisfy urban residents’ intellectual and participatory needs and to enhance the diversity and utility of urban gardens by applying traditional knowledge to a new model of urban agriculture. We hope that further research will be conducted to develop new types and models of urban agriculture going forward.