Plants & Allotments

There are two ways to an Allotment. Fill commissions at the Commission Board and open its View Rewards store, where one is 2,000 Commission Points and goes straight into your pack — or build it yourself at the Carpentry bench, where it is the only thing that asks for Grandmaster skill:

It is a yard piece and will not go indoors — six cells of building squeezed into a hall would be drawn a third of its size in a single tile. Right-click it to take it back up, though it will refuse while anything is still growing in it rather than destroy your plants.

Plant Seeds are bought with Commission Points and come from nowhere else — no gather turns one up and no vendor stocks them. Fill commissions at the Commission Board, then open its View Rewards store: a seed is 50 Commission Points, and it goes straight into your pack.

One seed sows one pot, so a garden kept full is a standing bill against the board rather than a one-off — four pots a day is four seeds a day.

The board sells a second seed beside it: a Hedge Seed, 25 Commission Points, sown in the same pots the same way. What comes up is one of the seven hedges in the Hedging section below — the plants that join into runs on the lawn.

Each of the four pots runs on its own clock, so they need not be planted together or tended together.

Both the bucket and the bag are sold by the Provisioner, on the Garden shelf — 2,500 gold a bucket and 2,500 gold a bag. They stack, so buy ahead.

A pot advances one stage every 6 hours, and there are 4 stages from seed to bloom — but only while it has both water and feed at that moment. Water runs out far sooner than fertiliser on purpose: watering is the twice-a-day visit, while one bag of fertiliser very nearly covers a whole plant.

Neglect costs you time and nothing else. A pot that runs dry simply stops where it was and waits — it never loses the plant, the stage it had reached, or the seed that started it. Water it and the clock picks up with a full stage ahead of it. Nothing in the yard dies while you are not looking at it.

Every seed rolls against the same four bands. Within a band each plant is equally likely, so the more plants a band holds the rarer any one of them is.

Every plant comes in 5 colours, and the seed rolls its colour in the same breath as its species — against the same four bands. The first colour of each is the one the plant is known for; the last is nearly always the colour the real flower cannot be, which is what makes a Black Poppy or a Chocolate Sunflower worth a month of seeds. A plant's colour is fixed the moment it is sown, shows in the pots once it is named, and stays with it for good: hover any potted plant to read Plant and Colour, each with its own rarity.

The two rolls are independent, so a Common plant in an Ultra Rare colour is as long a shot as an Ultra Rare plant in a Common one — and an Ultra Rare in an Ultra Rare colour is roughly one seed in a thousand. Each plant's colours are shown beside it below, rarest last; hover one for its name.

The hedgerow. What a first allotment fills up with, and what makes a Rare feel like something when it finally comes up.

Marigold

Cornflower

Daisy Clump

Lavender Sprig

Foxglove

Buttercup

Poppy

Fern Frond

Clover Patch

Snapdragon

Primrose

Bluebell

The garden proper — recognisable flowers worth deliberately growing a second of, to make a pair by the door.

Tiger Lily

Sunflower

White Rose

Red Rose

Hyacinth

Iris

Peony

Camellia

Wisteria Vine

The ones worth walking somebody across your lawn to look at.

Orchid

Bird of Paradise

Blood Lily

Moonflower

Nightshade Bloom

Silverleaf Fern

About one plant in thirty-three. A gardener growing one a day is looking at roughly a month between these.

Dragon's Breath

Moonglow Orchid

Ankh Blossom

The other kind of yard plant: hedges that join. A Hedge Seed from the Commission Board, sown in a pot like any other seed, comes up a day later as one of these seven — rolled at sowing against the same four bands as the plants, and kept secret until it is halfway grown the same way. Each is a one-square piece. Put two of the same kind side by side on the lawn and they grow into one run with rounded ends; turn a corner and the corner closes; ring a bed and the ring is seamless. Different kinds meeting do not merge, so a mixed hedge is exactly the row you laid. They are yard pieces only, come in no colours (the kind is the look), and weigh next to nothing against the house — a border is meant to be laid by the dozen.

	Hedge	Band	Chance	Stands
	Box Hedge	Common	21%	Waist high	Clipped box, small-leaved and dense, the hedge every formal garden is drawn in. Place two side by side and they grow into one run; ring a bed and the ring closes.
	Privet Hedge	Common	21%	Waist high	Quick, cheap and a little loose at the edges, with sprays of small white flowers in season. The hedge of a thousand front gardens.
	Lavender Border	Common	21%	Knee high	A low grey-green edging in full purple spike, the border for a path or a bed. Knee-high, so it lines a walk without hiding it.
	Yew Hedge	Rare	13%	Head high	Dark, dense and slow, the hedge of churchyards and old walks — a green wall you cannot see over.
	Rose Hedge	Rare	13%	Waist high	A hedging rose let run into a thicket, thorned and in flower — pink blooms all along the top of it.
	Copper Beech Hedge	Very Rare	10%	Head high	Beech clipped as hedging, in the copper form: every leaf a burnished bronze, held all winter.
	Holly Hedge	Ultra Rare	3.0%	Head high	Glossy dark holly, berried red, prickled all over — as good a boundary as a wall and a great deal better looking.