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Do you love plants but are overwhelmed with guilt because when you buy one, it does not survive more than one month in your care? Then get this game! We absolutely love plants and flowers but cannot keep one alive long enough to enjoy it fully even if we try really really hard, so when we found this board game we were so pleased and happy that we could not help but buying it straight away. This is a 2 to 5 players game, from Buffalo Games by Phil Walker-Harding beautifully illustrated by Hannah Bailey.
Let’s get down to business
Even just looking at the box transports you in a Garden Centre, you are immediately reminded of the musty smell in the greenhouses and just want to get the box open to look inside. It was a feast for the eyes as it packs very neatly and every piece is accurately made. Don’t even get us started on the little bags because they are simply too cute to handle. Each player has their individual mini-board and there is a board to display draw decks, discard decks and available plants. The artwork reminded me of a very old gardening book that my grandad used to own, I would spend hours to look at it as the illustrations were so pretty. The objective of the game is to fully grow as many plants as you can so you can earn victory points.
How to play
To be able to grow plants, players will need to collect resources, to do so they will pick 8 cards from the draw decks, keep one (with either the resource they want, a tool or decoration), swap the cards dealt in your hand with the other players, keep one, swap again and so on until the cards are finishes. Players can choose to acquire a new plant, to do so, they will have to shout “Nursery!” and discard one of the cards in their hand instead of keeping it. Once the cards in hand are finished you collect the resources acquired with the cards within that round (cutest little pieces ever!), then match the resources you have with the ones that your plant requires to grow and exchanged them for a propagation leaf that you can then deposit on your plant card. Once you cover all the numbers on the left of your plant card, your plant is fully grown and you’ve scored all the points available for that card. So yeah, you can see why we are getting so excited about this game… We can grow and keep plants alive this way!!!
Decorations and tool cards allow you to score extra point and collect extra resources.
For example:
- a tool card gains you 1 extra resource every time and you are allowed to keep as many tool cards as you wish;
- a decoration card gains you extra points based on what type of plants you own or how many plants you own that are fully grown.
Resources are: water, sun, plant food and green thumbs. Green thumbs can be exchanged in pairs for one of any resources of your choosing. You can also exchange leftover resources to acquire extra propagation to keep on your personal board for additional points. Finally, at the end of the game, you take out the nicest looking pad to score points. We absolutely adore a score book because we like to keep our scores and remind each other who is the champion of the house (don’t worry we are fully grown adults and only keep these things between ourselves… and now you know too). Replayability is quite high, as we already played several times but we haven’t gone through the whole deck of plants. Only fault, it might get a little repetitive over time and we wish we could have an expansion soon!
Final thoughts
This game is extremely relaxing, you can kind of try to ruin your opponent game, but if you focus on that too much you might miss important chances to collect the resources you need for your plants. It is also very enjoyable to play as you don’t have to wait for the other player to take their turn, you play at the same time at all stages of the game. So if you are like Roberta who is very impatient and constantly pokes Scott to hurry to take his turn, you’ll enjoy the change from turn based games. And if you are like Scott and think very long and carefully about your every move, you’ll enjoy not being hurried by the other player, who finally shuts up and enjoys a game peacefully. We said it over and over again, but the attention to detail in illustrations and pieces is simply amazing, boards and cards artwork alike are incredibly pretty and accurate. The pieces are insanely cute and well made, compared to other games that only use cardboard, completed and sorted in their own individual draw string little sacks. One last hurray for the score pad and the way the game packs in the box and we are done singing this game’s praises.
