The Hee Won Korean Garden was opened in May 1997 to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Ho-Am Art Museum and to celebrate the Year of Cultural Heritage. Hee Won brings together all the best of the classical Korean art of landscaping, creating a setting that is rarely found today.Korean landscapers traditionally avoided unnecessary artifice, instead following the natural contours of the site of each garden and incorporating into it naturally occurring elements just as they were. They called this technique "borrowed landscape." Man-made structures were of an unassuming scale and were designed and placed to blend with their surroundings in such a way as to make indiscernible the demarcation between the artificially created areas and the untended domain of nature. This subtle interplay of nature's spontaneity and human creativity epitomized the Korean ideal of complete intimacy and harmony with nature. The Korean garden provided the visitor a place to savor quietude and repose, but for the landscape artist it was also an opportunity to discover a new freedom of expression through joyful compliance with nature.Hee Won embodies the unpretentious esthetic of Korean gardens in every detail. It includes lawns and groves, ponds and flowing water, flowered terraces and pleasure pavilions. The eye is graced with delightful surprises at every turn, including artfully placed antique stonework pagodas, Buddhist images, lanterns, and water basins. Hee Won serves not only as a place for relaxation and visual enjoyment but also as a site for gaining a greater cultural understanding of the sense of beauty that characterized old Korea.