NOT YET
You have planted a thing
There is now something in the ground that was not there before. It will take a little while. That is the entire game, and everything else is a garden growing around it.
Growth 0
Soil Poor Sky Clear Then
Coming 0
Little job
This browser will not keep the garden. It runs for this visit.
A newer garden is saved here than this page understands. Nothing has been written over.
The save here was from an older game. This one starts fresh.
Your garden from the earlier version has been carried over.
Bare earth
Bare earth is open to the rain, and things turn up in it on their own.
UNDER THE GARDEN One worm, working.
A patch of earth and one worm. Plant something and leave it alone.
While you were away
- Away for
- Counted
- Showers
- Came ready
- The Rainflower
- Holding
- Growth
- Petrichor
- Soil
- Turned up
- Came by
The garden
One worm. Some earth. Something planted in it.
More ground
Every patch costs more than the last. The garden gets visibly bigger.
The corners
Each corner becomes one thing and then goes up in stages. Nothing is permanent: a corner can be cleared for most of the growth back, and built again once it has rained on.
The wet corner
Cleared ground. It can be built on again once a shower has settled it.
Behind the flower
Cleared ground. It can be built on again once a shower has settled it.
The far end
Cleared ground. It can be built on again once a shower has settled it.
By the gate
Cleared ground. It can be built on again once a shower has settled it.
The worm
He is currently Worm. Nobody was asked.
- Worm
- Garden Assistant
- Junior Soil Consultant
- Senior Soil Consultant
- Head of Earth
- Director of Damp
- Chief Moisture Officer
- Commissioner of Precipitation
Little jobs
Nudges towards things the garden can do that you have not met yet. Nothing here expires and nothing here is asking you to come back.
0 OF 17 DONE
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Plant something
Tap the bare patch and put a clover in it.
4 GROWTH
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Pick it
Wait for it to come up, then take it.
6 GROWTH
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Stand in the rain
It will rain on its own. Be there when it does.
10 GROWTH
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Let it come back
A picked plant grows again. Pick it a second time.
12 GROWTH
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Two of them
Grow something that is not clover.
40 GROWTH
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Leave one empty
Let it rain on a bed with nothing in it.
30 GROWTH
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Oh look, a bee
Have something in flower when one goes past.
60 GROWTH
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Turn a bed
Bare earth can be turned over. It dries faster that way.
40 GROWTH
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Decent earth
The worms are working. Get the soil to fair.
120 GROWTH
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It came up on its own
Damp ground, decent soil, and a bed left empty.
200 GROWTH
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Another one
Meet a second worm.
260 GROWTH
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Keep it dry
Half an hour without rain, and then rain.
300 GROWTH 3 PETRICHOR
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Three in flower
Three things flowering at once.
500 GROWTH
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Genuinely good ground
Soil health up to healthy.
1500 GROWTH 4 PETRICHOR
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A big one
A long dry spell, heavy rain, and the bloom that comes of it. Pick it yourself.
1200 GROWTH
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See a frog
It wants a proper pond, heavy rain, and a garden that has been going a while.
3000 GROWTH 10 PETRICHOR
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Every corner something
All four corners of the garden made into something.
5000 GROWTH
This one needs JavaScript. Without it there is no garden, only the explanation below, which is the part that was always the point.
Field guide
Everything the garden has produced so far, and a great many things it has not.
0 OF 56 FOUND
Plants
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?
Grow one.
Turns up anyway. Might as well be deliberate about it.
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?
Grow one.
Small, cheerful, entirely unbothered by any of this.
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?
Grow one.
Not doing anything. Doing it extremely well.
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?
Grow one.
You did not plan the colour. That is rather the point.
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?
Grow one.
Goes straight through a jumper and stays there until Thursday.
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?
Grow one.
Prehistoric. Unimpressed. Waiting for the weather to improve into worse.
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?
Grow one.
Does nothing all day. Then the sun goes down and the whole garden smells of it.
Worms
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Already here.
The original. Has opinions. Has recently acquired a job title.
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?
Somewhere warm to work.
Turned up the day the heap did. Has not looked up since.
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?
Something with roots that go a long way down.
Lives further down than anyone expected. Comes up for roots and nothing else.
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?
Ground in genuinely good condition.
Stripes. Nobody knows why. He is not saying.
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?
A garden that has been going a while.
You have to take it on trust. It is doing its best down there.
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?
Rain, again and again, on ground that has been waiting for it.
Catches the light. Should not, really. Does.
Visitors
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?
Something in flower.
Arrived at speed. Did a circuit. Left at speed. Was definitely here.
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?
A growing garden that has seen some rain.
Walked to the very end of a leaf, thought about it, and flew.
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?
A properly wet day.
Going somewhere. Will arrive. Not today.
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?
Somewhere dark and quietly rotting.
Fourteen legs. Uses all of them. Immediately.
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?
Colour the garden did not plan.
No notes. Perfect.
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?
Standing water, and something to hunt over it.
Hovering. Reversing. Showing off, frankly.
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?
?
Sat down beside the water and has made no further plans.
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?
A dark corner, in a garden that has been going a while.
Absolutely committed to the lantern. Nothing to be done.
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?
Good ground, and enough going on under it to be worth a look.
Arrived the moment the ground was worth turning over. Stands very close. Watches.
Fungi
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?
Damp ground nobody is using.
Appeared overnight. Nobody saw it happen. Nobody ever does.
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?
Damp ground nobody is using.
Here for about a day and a half, and it knows it.
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?
Damp ground nobody is using.
A perfect circle. No explanation offered and none coming.
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?
Damp ground nobody is using.
Extremely orange. The field guide has gone quiet about it.
Rainflowers
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?
Where everything here started.
Somebody put it there. Possibly you. It has not done anything yet.
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?
Pick the seed’s first bloom.
Two leaves and an opinion. Closes when it rains, which nobody asked it to do.
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?
A flower that has spent its life wet.
Holds one drop at the tip all day and will not be told about it.
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?
Water, all the way down, and a great many blooms.
Lights up when it rains. Nobody wired it. It is not that sort of light.
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?
Ground good enough to be worth pointing at.
Points down. Roots first, apparently. The worms approve enormously.
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?
A heap, a bin, a station, and a flower that has noticed.
Glows a warm brown, which should not be possible and is.
-
?
Flowers, and something that came for them.
Open at the first hint of it. Extremely popular locally.
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?
The busiest corner of the garden, and a flower at the centre of it.
Visible from the gate. Visited by everything with wings and several things without.
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?
Somewhere shaded, and something already growing in it.
Prefers the corner nobody uses. Has done rather well out of it.
-
?
A whole corner gone dark and damp and busy.
Comes on at dusk and stays on. The moths have formed a committee.
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?
?
Nobody has a good explanation. There is a frog in it. There is often a frog in it.
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?
Everything, all at once, for long enough.
It has stopped being a flower and become a small weather event. The worm has applied for a transfer.
Weather
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?
Wait and see.
Nothing much. Pleasant about it.
-
?
Wait and see.
Thinking about it. Has decided.
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?
Wait and see.
The far end of the garden has gone. It will be back.
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?
Wait and see.
Hard ground, and a garden holding its breath.
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?
Wait and see.
Barely committing. Still counts.
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?
Wait and see.
The good sort. Everything leans into it.
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?
Wait and see.
Coming down properly. The worm has gone in.
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?
Wait and see.
Rain and sun at once. Nobody has ever known what to do about this.
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?
Wait and see.
Enormous. Brief. Talked about for days afterwards.
Odd things
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?
The worm will turn something up eventually.
Brass, four holes, older than the garden. Somebody lost this here once.
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?
The worm will turn something up eventually.
Crimped, faded, entirely unreadable. It was a drink once.
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?
The worm will turn something up eventually.
Green swirl. Still perfect. Nobody has claimed it.
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?
The worm will turn something up eventually.
Teaspoon. Bent. No further information is available.
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?
The worm will turn something up eventually.
Fits nothing here. Fitted something once. This is worse.
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?
The worm will turn something up eventually.
One leg missing. Expression unchanged.
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?
The worm will turn something up eventually.
Plain band. No inscription. You have decided not to think about it.
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?
The worm will turn something up eventually.
Nine centimetres. Correct in every detail. No.
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?
The worm will turn something up eventually.
It fits the worm. Nobody is going to look into how.
Field notes
The worm is the joke. These are not. Every sentence in a box below is the wording an independent review approved, with its fence beside it.
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NOT YET
What the first drop does
It has just rained on your garden. That sentence is what was happening while it did.
When a water drop strikes a suitable dry, wettable porous surface, air can become trapped at the drop–surface interface; bubbles can then reach the drop surface and burst, ejecting tiny liquid aerosols that can carry material from the surface into the air.
Shown under controlled impact and surface conditions. It does not identify the chemistry of every aerosol, or explain every rain associated smell.
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NOT YET
Where the word came from
The readout has started counting something. Two people and one journal are the reason it has a name at all.
Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Grenfell Thomas proposed the name petrichor in a 1964 Nature paper for the odour released when diverse dry rocks, clays, and soils are moistened; the name draws on Greek petra (stone) and ichor, the mythic fluid or blood of the gods.
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NOT YET
Who is down there
Your soil is improving and the worms are getting the credit. They are not the only ones working, and they are not the ones this sentence is about.
Geosmin is an earthy-smelling terpenoid made by multiple microorganisms, including Streptomyces bacteria; biochemical experiments have demonstrated a geosmin-producing pathway in Streptomyces coelicolor.
Nothing in this garden makes that compound. The worms move earth about and the game keeps a number for it.
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NOT YET
An account, and not a law
The ground has been dry for a long stretch, and this garden will pay more for the next rain on it.
In Bear and Thomas's 1966 proposed account, low relative humidity favoured uptake of some atmospheric organic compounds by rocks and clays, warm-to-hot conditions accelerated surface transformations, and moisture near saturation displaced volatile products from pores. This is a historical mechanism, not a universal law relating drought duration to smell strength.
Read the sentence above rather than the payout. The game is a toy with an opinion. The account is a proposal from 1966, and the review would not let it be stated as a rule.
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NOT YET
Not every fall, and not every ground
That one came down hard. A garden does not answer every kind of rain the same way, and neither did the experiment.
In the 2015 experiments, aerosol generation depended on surface wetting properties and impact speed: selected clay and sandy-clay conditions produced aerosols at light- and moderate-rain-like velocities, while sand and the tested heavy-rain-like conditions did not produce the same effect.
One set of experiments, under chosen conditions. A garden is not a laboratory and this one is not pretending to be.
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NOT YET
Two words that are not one word
The readout in this garden counts something it calls petrichor. It is a game currency and not either of the things below.
Petrichor is not a chemical synonym for geosmin: Bear and Thomas coined petrichor for an odour or essence associated with diverse rock and soil hosts, while geosmin is one specific earthy-smelling microbial sesquiterpenoid.
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NOT YET
A threshold in water, and not in air
You have started keeping records. This is the sort of number that turns out to be narrower than it looks.
WHO reports an odour threshold of about 4 nanograms per litre for geosmin in water. Sensory studies show that perceived intensity depends on test conditions including water temperature and panelist sensitivity, so this is not an airborne petrichor threshold or a universal value for every person.
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NOT YET
A different smell entirely
You can see the weather coming now. That is a good moment to be told what is not in it.
Ozone is O3. Chemical-hazard and air-quality sources describe it as pungent, sometimes chlorine-like, while geosmin is earthy; a storm's presence alone does not establish that ozone is the odour someone noticed. Ground-level ozone is an air pollutant.
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NOT YET
A narrow safety statement
There is a hut, a kettle and a filing system. Somebody may start quoting you. This is the sentence to be careful with when they do.
At environmentally relevant concentrations in drinking water, geosmin and 2-methylisoborneol are treated by WHO guidance as taste-and-odour concerns rather than direct human health hazards; that narrow statement does not make every wet-soil aerosol or rain-exposed surface harmless.
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NOT YET
An old button
The worm brought up a button. Brass, four holes, older than the garden. There is no system behind this and it is not the start of a quest. Somebody lost a button here once, and now you have it.
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NOT YET
The two nobody would sign
You have instruments, records and a worm on the payroll. Two things are exactly as unsettled as they were when you had one patch of dirt. No single verified general cause for every before rain or pavement smell. This investigation does not turn smell into a forecast, or give wet pavement one intrinsic recipe. None of the equipment helped with either.
Every one of those has a source. Read the receipts.
The record
- PLANTED
- 0
- PICKED
- 0
- BLOOMS
- 0
- SHOWERS
- 0
- PETRICHOR
- 0
- BEST SINGLE
- 0
- WORMS
- 1
- GROWTH, EVER
- 0
Acknowledgements
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SOMETHING IN THE GROUND
You put a thing in the earth and walked away from it.
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IT GREW
It grew. Nobody is more surprised than the worm.
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THE FIRST RAIN
The ground went dark and the whole place changed colour.
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THAT SMELL
Dry ground, then rain on it. There it is.
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MORE GROUND
Two patches. Technically a garden. Legally, arguably.
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ANOTHER WORM
There is another one. Nobody sent for it.
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OH LOOK, A BEE
It came, it did a circuit, it left. Perfect visit.
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IT CAME UP ON ITS OWN
Nobody planted that. It is there anyway.
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GOOD EARTH
Dark, crumbly, full of things. The worms did that.
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A PROPER GARDEN
Eight patches of ground and something in most of them.
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THE WORM HAS A TITLE
He awarded it to himself. Nobody was asked.
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SOMETHING ELSE
Not yet.
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SOMETHING ELSE
Not yet.
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INSTRUMENTS
You own a weather station. This is who you are now.
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SOMETHING ELSE
Not yet.
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SOMETHING ELSE
Not yet.
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COMMISSIONER
Of Precipitation. He printed the badge himself.
What is out there
The first few have things behind them. The rest are the shape of where this is going.
- One worm. Some earth. One worm. Some earth. Something planted in it.
- A garden, technically More ground, better soil, and a heap round the back.
- Somewhere to live Flowers, visitors, standing water, and things that arrive on their own.
- Small ecosystem Ponds with frogs in. Instruments. A second worm with a job.
- The weather operation The smell has become a subject. There is a kettle, and a worm with a lanyard.
Settings
Three things, none of them a number to chase.
Motion
Your save
The garden lives in this browser and nowhere else. Take a copy to move it, or paste one to bring it back.
Starting again
Takes the whole garden back to one worm and some earth. It asks twice.
WHAT THE GAME IS DOING
The mechanic is the mechanism.
Soil, water, roots, worms and weather are a system that runs itself, and a garden is the smallest honest version of one. Nothing in it is a claim. This is:
When a water drop strikes a suitable dry, wettable porous surface, air can become trapped at the drop–surface interface; bubbles can then reach the drop surface and burst, ejecting tiny liquid aerosols that can carry material from the surface into the air.
Shown under controlled impact and surface conditions. It does not identify the chemistry of every aerosol, or explain every rain-associated smell. A garden with a readout is a toy, and the toy has opinions the review would not sign.
This investigation does not turn smell into a forecast, or give wet pavement one intrinsic recipe.
Read the study See the receipts
The worm takes credit for the rain. He is wrong. He is not going to stop.