Gartenbau

You and your fellow players are gardeners racing to create and grow a garden that contains four fully mature flowers, along with other seedlings and plants, in an effort to earn the most prestige by fulfilling each of the flower's unique growing requirements. The player with the most prestige at the end of the game is crowned "Gartenmeister" — The Master Gardener.

Seedling Market

Using the sunflower rondel, players will travel around the board selecting Seedling tiles or sun/water resources. Seedling tiles you select will be placed as the first tier in your garden. The colors you select will be pre-requisites for which tiles you can purchase in the plant market and the colors as well as their positioning could contribute to how your flower tiles will score you prestige points. The resources you collect, sun and water tokens, will be used to purchase the plant tiles. The resource costs of the plant tiles vary by type and quantity.

Plant Market

Seedling tiles on their own do not score points, but when you upgrade the seedling with plant tiles they will be worth prestige points. The plants will only score if they are visible in your garden at the end of the game. Plant tiles must cover two seedling tiles, matching the color condition on the tile. This creates the second tier of your garden. Many of the Flower tiles have scoring conditions based on the types of plants you have visible in your garden as well.

Place Flower Tiles

With the correct plant tiles in play, place your flower tiles over two plant tiles creating a third tier in your garden. Flower tiles offer the ability to score even more prestige, but you will no longer receive the prestige from the plant tiles.

Deciding what plants to cover can make a big difference in your score, as covering up higher value plant tiles will produce lower net lifts in points. Some flower tiles score based on the seedling and plant colors and even their physical arrangements in your garden. Make sure you properly build your first seedling tile and second plant tile layers to maximize those prestige points!

Two Options of Flower Tiles: Easy or Advanced

To learn the game, use the beginner Flower tiles which are more straight forward in how they score. After that, you're ready for the experienced version of Gartenbau with Flower tiles that score based on how you construct your seedling and plant layers with both color and positioning. The turns are taken in the same way, but the strategy for what tiles you draft at the beginning to create the best synergies and how build your garden makes the playing experience push a lot deeper into new strategies.