This study aims to classify the types and roles of Registered private gardens amid the limitations of the urban park system and the expanding interest in garden culture, and to propose a direction for policy support tailored to each type. For this purpose, attribute data of all 154 officially registered private gardens in Korea were analyzed, focusing on six variables: garden area, operating entity, level of expertise, entrance fee, revenue structure, and locational characteristics. A K-means cluster analysis was conducted, followed by spatiotemporal cross-tabulation and in-depth interviews with garden owners to incorporate both quantitative and qualitative insights. As a result, Registered private gardens were classified into four distinct types—community-based small gardens, commercially integrated gardens, locally embedded gardens, and culturally specialized gardens—each exhibiting notable differences in spatial scale, revenue structure, location, and regional distribution. These variations shaped not only their operational characteristics but also their long-term developmental orientations. The findings indicate that Registered private gardens are increasingly functioning as multidimensional green infrastructure, moving beyond decorative purposes to provide public benefits such as education, healing, tourism, community interaction, and cultural expression. Nevertheless, existing legal and institutional frameworks remain largely uniform, offering standardized registration criteria and support mechanisms that fail to address the diverse needs of each garden type—thereby limiting their long-term sustainability and public value realization. In response, this study proposes four key policy recommendations: differentiated support schemes for each garden type, the development of tailored evaluation criteria and incentive systems, legal amendments to better accommodate the diversity of Registered private gardens, and the establishment of long-term regional planning strategies.
Kim et al. (Wed,) studied this question.