Micro Garden

You are competing landscape designers and have been tasked with creating gardens for your clients backyards. The clients have big ideas for their small spaces, so to make the most out of the land you will use the square foot gardening method. The term “square foot gardening” was popularized by Mel Bartholomew in his 1981 book and television series. Using this method a square bed is divided into a grid of smaller squares and each section is planted with a different crop species. Once a square foot is harvested a different crop can get planted allowing for a continuous harvest.

An advantage of this system is that the densely planted crops can form a living mulch, prevent weeds and act as a natural insect repellent. This method, known as companion planting, has been used by many cultures over time for this purpose on a larger scale. In Micro Garden players will be planting corn, beans and pumpkins which help to support growth together. Adding sunflowers to the garden supplies shade to the crops as well as expanding access to pollinators. Create micro gardens by stacking cards and matching crops to meet your clients goals and create them before your competitors to be named the best landscape designer.

How to Play Beginning with the start player and then continuing play clockwise, a player takes the following actions on each of their turns.

1. Play a card from their hand into their garden. a. When playing a plot card into your garden, the card must have some part of it stack on top of underneath a previously played card.

b. In order to match symbols to claim a garden design card the crop symbols need to be touching orthogonally.

1. Draw back up to two plot cards. Check the number of cards currently in your hand then draw cards until you reach two.

2. Claim a garden design goal card. If your garden meets the conditions for a garden design goal you can take it and place it in your scoring area. Receive sunflower tokens equal to the number of visible sunflower icons in your garden. Discard your plot cards to the discard pile and remove your starter plot from the game. Draw a new starter plot from the starter plot deck. Place it so that the face-up side only has two symbols showing.

If a player has sunflower token they may spend them to take an additional special action during their turn. • Spend 1 sunflower token and draw an additional card. • Spend 2 sunflower tokens and play an additional card this turn.