Plant Pets

This mobile app is to help those understand the basics of gardening!

Have you ever said:

          -Gardening is not for me

         -I kill every plant I own

         -I don't have a big enough place for a garden

         -I wish I knew where to start

     If yes, then this app will help you learn the basic terminology of gardening, as well as taking care of virtual plants that display cute facial emotions that can uplift your mental health! If not, but you enjoy some cozy style games, give this one a try!

 

     There’s plenty of times I have heard someone say that they don’t know where to start with gardening or that they didn’t have a big enough backyard. I was like that as well until my mom gifted me an amaryllis flower for my birthday one year. I soon sought out some basic soil and a planter to start my new little flower buddy. After a few months, I ended up moving, but was glad I could take my flower with me since I began to enjoy watching it grow. This is where I started to get into gardening myself, but I lived in apartments with little to no front yard or porch. I searched for information on how I could start something small and found that people were growing plants in similar planters to what I had. They could grow a couple different varieties in each one and I was fascinated.

     Then I began my search of collecting various information and tips on how to garden and I was feeling overwhelmed. As soon as I learned one thing, the garden community would throw me a new vocabulary word and then I had to change websites to find out what it meant. I created this application as a means to help people understand the basic information, they would need to grow a successful planter garden, as well as walk them through the steps of taking care of a plant. However, I wanted to recreate the same joy and love I had for my little flower when I started.

     This is where I decided to add facial emotions on the planters themselves. Adding faces is a way to create an emotional connection with the player in hopes that their love for a virtual plant will transition to their real-life plants. There’s so many pro’s to gardening and the biggest one for me was mental wellness, which is something else I wanted to share with the players. Taking care of my little plants just puts me in a better mood. It allows me to step away from and frustrating any stressful tasks, gets me outside, and overall helps reset my mood. Plus, it’s really exciting to see your plants grow from something so small to fruiting tomatoes that you can eat!