Heirlooms: plants you keep for good

Keep your best plant as an heirloom

Heirloom plants are the ones you breed and keep for good. Breed a line of plants until a seed reaches Gen 3, sow it, and when it blooms, keep it instead of cutting it. It stays in its bed in full bloom, gives a gift to the beds beside it, and bears fruit every eight hours — now and then with a seed you can give to a friend.

In most cozy garden games a plant is something you use up: sow it, wait, cut it, sell it, and the bed is bare again. An heirloom is the plant that stays, and the one you made. Pair, breed, keep, share.

Breed a line, generation by generation

Plant breeding is not new here: plants of the same kind, blooming side by side, share their pollen. Harvest one while its neighbour is still in bloom, and you may get a brand-new seed with a little of both parents in it.

What is new is depth. A bred seed is a generation deeper than its parents, and now it says so on a Gen badge, in your bag and when you pick a seed to sow. Sow it beside another plant of its kind, breed again, and the line goes deeper still. At Gen 3, a seed is heirloom-worthy.

Not every harvest crosses. Well-watered blooms cross more often, so if a pair does not take, sow another and look after it.

Breeding and keeping both need a free account: a guest garden is swept away, and an heirloom is meant to stay.

A plaque with your name on it

Sow your Gen 3 seed and let it grow. When it blooms and you go to harvest it, the game asks first: keep it for good? Choose Keep as Heirloom and it is never cut. It stays in that bed, in full bloom, from then on.

It gets a plaque with the name of its line, who kept it, its generation and the season it was kept in. The weather can leave a mark too: keep it in the rain and it may stay Dewkissed for good — or Mistveiled in fog, Sungilded under a high summer sun, Frostkissed in falling snow.

Breed deeper before you keep, and the plaque grows grander: Heirloom, then Old Line, then Ancient Line.

You can keep one heirloom of each family, twelve at most in a garden, so which line you keep is a real choice.

Grow your own upgrades

Every heirloom gives a gift to the beds beside it, and each family gives its own. A Daisy leaves morning dew on its neighbours, as good as an extra watering. A Bellflower keeps them growing through the night. A Fern keeps the weeds out, and a Rose makes the blooms beside it cross far more often, so your next line comes sooner.

In other games you buy upgrades like these: a sprinkler, a heater. Here you grow them. Bravenbloom is a free browser game with no paid advantages, so nobody can buy one either.

A gift only reaches the beds right beside it, so where you keep each heirloom is a small puzzle of your own: a Vine or a Lotus among the beds you harvest most, a Lantern beside the ones you want growing through winter.

One gift for each family, in the game’s own words.

It bears fruit while you are away

A kept heirloom bears fruit on its own. The first comes soon after you keep it, while you are still in the garden, and after that it bears again every eight hours, whether you are there or not. When it is ready, tap it and gather: produce of its own kind, sometimes kissed by the weather, and a little XP.

Share your line with a friend

One time in four, a gathering also leaves a seed of the line. That seed carries the name of whoever first kept the line, and it is already deep enough to keep. Give it to a friend, and when they grow it and keep it, their plaque says where it came from: “of the Mira line · kept by Sam”.

In a multiplayer garden, a line travels further than you do: every seed bred from it carries the founder’s name on, for good.

If you play with friends, they can walk up to your heirloom on a visit, tap it and read its plaque — though only you can gather its fruit.

The fruit is a reason to come back. The better one is the garden itself: it remembers who grew it, the best thing in it is something you made, and you can give it away.

A new story at the Garden Board

Once your first garden story is done, the Garden Board has a new one for you: Two of a Kind, A Seed of Two Parents, Deeper Roots, Kept for Good and The First Gathering. It walks you from your first pair of seeds to your first gathering.

Your journal has a new Lineage page too: every family, how deep you have bred it, the gift it gives and the next thing to do, with the plaque of every heirloom you have kept.