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[Silver]

OK so i have been thinking about this for ages and i haven't come across any detailed discussion about horticulture. I see there are posts about manually planting and growing tress in desired locations which is an awesome idea but i must say as a passionate gardener and a huge fan of the Rollercoaster tycoon series (which has an awesome gardening system) i would love to see more. so to speak. Manually planting trees and shrubs, watering them and hedging them would be great.

A profession could be made for this, "Gardener" or something much more creative. I was thinking of this as purely aesthetic at first as a big draw for me is the ability to create things, which i guess is the draw card for most people, but then it struck me that gardening could be have an actual effect on your fortress. The gardener could preform a task called 'hedging' on trees and shrubs much like engraving stone.  This much like engraving could produce happy thoughts. I guess some people would say "why not just engrave wall?" but the difference would be that thus can and would be done outside where there are no natural walls. Formal gardens could be made at entrances that maybe not so much give a huge bonus to dwarf happiness but maybe have a positive effect on human and elven traders. Plus i would personally find this very visually pleasing of course  . Also, like in other threads i have read, trees with nuts or fruit could be harvested as a food source. SO, does anyone have any thoughts or feedback? I am sure i could have thought this all through a bit better but i would love to get some ideas off others bounced back.

[Granite26]

With the caviat that I think this is an elf skill, I like the possibilities it creates.  Being able to 'grow' hedge walls as defensive structures, thorn bushes as mor active ones (think barbed wire for druids) would be cool.

Topiary has as many possibilities as engraving and other statues.

Anyway, there's a lot of plusses here, and if it were used as a skill that gave elves (or whatever) some unique flavor, awesome.

[Virex]

Well, if we could combine this with making indoor gardens, it would just be awesome. Having a towercap garden around the watterfall in the center of your dining room would be quite impressive...

[Silver]

Yeah topiary was the term i was looking for. Indoor gardens also interests me a lot. With glass buildings, maybe a proper greenhouse could be made for growing fruit in off seasons. With waterfalls and mist or even steam, certain seasonal conditions could be controlled year round. Indoor orchids. Even magma vents or pools could produce heat to simulate summer or something along those lines.

[Lidhuin]

Primarily an elf skill as far as I see it, however, dwarves could perhaps still be able to use a similar skill on their tower caps and spider silk? Imagine carving a spider silk hedge Very dwarven in my opinion. Elves should be able to do what the dwarves do too with this skill, but dwarves should not be able to do what the elves do.

Humans should be limited in this, perhaps not even getting the skill at all.

[Wahnsinniger]

It makes sense that all three races would get it. Humans and Dwarves would have it relegated to mainly Herb-garden and Aesthetic uses, while Elves would also be able to shape Vegetation for Defensive Purposes (as already suggested). They could even use poisonous and thorny planets as mediocre traps (Or a massive Venus Fly Trap eating things that try to get past it. Heh heh heh)

[Silver]

It makes sense that all three races would get it. Humans and Dwarves would have it relegated to mainly Herb-garden and Aesthetic uses, while Elves would also be able to shape Vegetation for Defensive Purposes (as already suggested). They could even use poisonous and thorny planets as mediocre traps (Or a massive Venus Fly Trap eating things that try to get past it. Heh heh heh)

Yes agreed. This would fit more with the 'lore' of DF i guess, it feels like it would 'naturally' fit in the game.

[JayThirtySeven]

I was skeptical about dwarves cutting hedges until the "It would impress the elves!" part. If the dwarves are willing to put up with the elves so far and not offer them any of the wrong trade goods, some fortresses might go so far as putting up gardens to impress them.

I don't think it's really a good idea to go too far with "elves get this, but dwarves don't" line of thinking. Humans, elves, and dwarves all have hands, eyes, and sharp objects. They can all cultivate topiary if they try. The real distinction is that dwarves don't give two rocks about some flimsy flowering bush; they want huge glowing mushrooms carved into clever geometric shapes. If you want to make a garden for your dwarves, you don't use surface plants. If you want to make a garden for visiting diplomats, your gardener will just have to suck it up and trim the rose bushes. Heck, dwarves could even get unhappy thoughts from working on / looking at surface plants, if you wanted to take it to an extreme.

Edzim Rockthumper hates flowers for their garish colors.

[Granite26]

I was skeptical about dwarves cutting hedges until the "It would impress the elves!" part. If the dwarves are willing to put up with the elves so far and not offer them any of the wrong trade goods, some fortresses might go so far as putting up gardens to impress them.

I don't think it's really a good idea to go too far with "elves get this, but dwarves don't" line of thinking. Humans, elves, and dwarves all have hands, eyes, and sharp objects. They can all cultivate topiary if they try. The real distinction is that dwarves don't give two rocks about some flimsy flowering bush; they want huge glowing mushrooms carved into clever geometric shapes. If you want to make a garden for your dwarves, you don't use surface plants. If you want to make a garden for visiting diplomats, your gardener will just have to suck it up and trim the rose bushes. Heck, dwarves could even get unhappy thoughts from working on / looking at surface plants, if you wanted to take it to an extreme.

Edzim Rockthumper hates flowers for their garish colors.

elves can already harvest ethical wood where dwarves can't?

(makes me think WCIII methods...  Maybe when fruits are added, all trees will have a 'wood' fruit that only elves can harvest?  Would require 1 tree to be more than one log, though, but if trees grew slower, that would work well.)

[JayThirtySeven]

That's part of why I said "too far". "Ethical wood" was made up by elves anyway; at least from a dwarf perspective, the definition of "ethical" wood is that it was harvested by elves. The elves will likely always complain if dwarves harvest wood, even if dwarves could somehow perfectly imitate the methods used by the elves.

Which is to say: The reason only elves can make ethical wood is that elves are also the authority on what constitutes ethical wood.

Even if there is something objectively ethical about how the elves do it, the ancient secrets of tree-cutting are not something you can really just guess at. A dwarf spend decades trying to get wood without pissing off elves and still never get it.

It's fine if there are a few "secret techniques" or "ancestral arts" that only available to certain races, but cutting bushes into particular shapes? Anybody can understand that and with enough practice anybody can do it well.

[Draco18s]

A dwarf spend decades trying to get wood without pissing off elves and still never get it.

A smart dwarf will buy ethical wood from the elves, then attempt to sell it back, only to get backhanded with the unethical treatment of trees speech.

[Duke 2.0]

A dwarf spend decades trying to get wood without pissing off elves and still never get it.

A smart dwarf will buy ethical wood from the elves, then attempt to sell it back, only to get backhanded with the unethical treatment of trees speech.

 A stupid dwarf will just let it go. A smart dwarf will construct an "Ethical" wood deathtrap for the elves next year.

[thepuska]

Urist McGardeners would tantrum every year because their masterful bush sculptures dropped their leaves.

[Silver]

Urist McGardeners would tantrum every year because their masterful bush sculptures dropped their leaves.

Well why not? A gardener needs to constantly tend to his garden otherwise it dies. A masterful topiary would just be like a masterful engraving except it just needs constant attention. As dwarfs are less likely to care for such things as growing surface plants, this would be a great effort to maintain. It therefore creates the scenario of effort = reward which seems fair. At the moment it's very easy to get a system up and running and then forget about - i.e. food production. Being outside growing surface plants would in certain situations be quite dangerous therefor having a certain risk involved which again would validate having a positive reward like the before mentioned 'happiness' effect.

[Granite26]

Which is to say: The reason only elves can make ethical wood is that elves are also the authority on what constitutes ethical wood.

This is currently the case, but seems to be more an abstraction based on the fact that elves aren't supported and dwarves are than a not so subtle dis on environmentalists.