The Garden

The Garden is version 2.0's growing layer: plants that are their own blocks, breeding, greenhouses, bees, a cafe and shows you can enter.

What the Garden is

Version 2.0 is the largest single addition the server has had. It arrived as one release with two halves: a platform conversion onto API 26.2 with four bundled datapacks, and the Garden itself, which is a whole growing, cooking and flower-showing layer sitting beside the forge and the economy rather than inside either of them.

The short version: you plant species that are real custom blocks instead of reskinned wheat, each with a genotype you can breed. Ground matters, so soils, water and seasons feed into what you harvest. You build greenhouses out of ordinary blocks. Bees pollinate, blight spreads, and a cafe turns coffee cherries into drinks you roast yourself and sell over a counter. Garden ingredients enter the vanilla brewing stand. A Herbarium and a Codex keep track of what you have found and what everything does, and Garden Shows are where you compete with it.

It did not all land at once. Six releases carried it, and each later one corrected the one before, so the behaviour described across this wiki is the 2.0.5 behaviour.

ReleaseWhat it settled
2.0.0The platform conversion, and the Garden: species and genetics, crops and dishes, the cafe, soils and greenhouses, potions, the Herbarium, Garden Shows, six new professions.
2.0.1Seeds and their sources, the block roster, and the deletion of the Expedition system that had never been switched on.
2.0.2Structure detection, planting rules, groves, and water as a growth gate rather than only a quality term.
2.0.3Every planted thing gets its own block state, so two species on the same vanilla host stop looking identical.
2.0.4Plants hold their look under pressure, greenhouses accept any design with doors, soils and maintenance.
2.0.5The Garden explains itself: the Codex, a Servery refusal that names the missing block, a seed route for every species, help on a screen rather than a wall of text.

The Garden was written and built against the server's own guards and offline checks. It has not been through a full sign-off pass on the live server, so treat exact numbers here as the shipped defaults rather than as measurements of a running world.

Plants are blocks of their own

A Blacklight block is a position with a texture and a name, and it has exactly the behaviours it declares. Nothing is inferred from the vanilla block underneath it. That rule is why a garden plant is not a wheat crop wearing a different texture.

Each species and each visible growth stage claims its own reserved state on a host block, so two species sharing one vanilla host still render as two different plants. The register of those looks is full: all 64 reservable states are claimed, which is why 2.0.5 added no new plant art at all and said so instead of quietly reusing one.

Identity is positional. The record that says "this is a coffee plot, this is its species and this is its genotype" lives in the chunk, not in the block, so it travels with the chunk and survives a restart without a separate write. The consequence you will actually feel: the record is the plot, not the block. Placing a support block by hand grants you nothing, because the item writes the record and the block alone does not.

Eighteen species sit across six shapes. The shape decides how the plant is placed and how it ripens.

ShapeHow it sitsSpecies
Ground, agedPlanted on tilled ground, advances through age stepsEmberbloom, Goldcrown, hemp, chili, Cinderpetal, Frostlace, rye, barley, soy, sugar beet
Ground, two tallOccupies two blocks once grownNightveil Iris, cannabis
Ground, recordedResolved from the plot record rather than from the block, because three species share the hostcoffee, tea, Saltmarsh Aster
Side mountedMounts on the side of a jungle log and faces outwardvanilla
Ceiling hungHangs downward and ripens by its berriesDuskbell
Ground, timedNot age based; ripeness is held in the recordcave mushroom

Right-clicking a plant reads the plot back to you: the species, the stage and the ground it is standing in. That readout is how you tell a real plot from a block that merely looks like one, and it is the fastest way to check that a planting actually registered.

The custom art comes from the resource pack. Without the pack you see the vanilla fallback for that host, painted per viewer, and everything still behaves the same. Bedrock players get a declared fallback block rather than nothing.

Species, genetics and two kinds of quality

The registry holds eighteen species: seven new flowers, hemp and cannabis carried over from the older farming system, and nine crops (rye, barley, coffee, tea, chili, soy, sugar beet, vanilla and cave mushroom).

Genetics sit on the seed. A species uses two, three or four loci of two alleles each, packed into a single byte that the seed carries, and the heterozygote is written one way only, so each locus has three states rather than four: 9, 27 or 81 genotypes depending on the species, and two seeds of the same organism still stack. A seed that has never been bred reads as its species default rather than as a missing value, which is why a plain starter seed and a bred one behave consistently.

Crossing happens on the plot. Two mature plants that are orthogonal neighbours on the same level can cross; there is no radius scan and diagonals do not count. The chance you see quoted on the crossing card is the server chance plus a Botanist's Hybrid Vigour for the player asking, clamped the same way the code clamps it, rather than the raw config number. Mutation on harvest is a separate gate and it ships off by default, so the Codex card for any discovery says so and names the key rather than describing a path you cannot walk.

Quality is measured on two axes that are easy to confuse and are deliberately kept apart.

AxisBandsWhat sets it
Bred qualityWild, Tended, Fine, PristineWhat the plant is. It comes from the genotype the seed carries, so it is inherited and it travels with the seed.
Grown qualityCommon, Fine, Choice, PristineHow the plant was raised. It is rolled at harvest from seven separate terms, each of which can be read individually rather than arriving as one opaque number.

Grown quality then propagates into food. A dish scales on its worst ingredient, not on the average, so one poor component stays visible instead of being washed out by three good ones. Two dishes of the same family refresh each other rather than stacking.

Every species has a way in. Seeds reach you through the forage tables by climate, through rifts, through fishing, through the Event Shop and through the Grove Exchange, and since 2.0.5 every one of those doors builds its stack through the same function. Before that, nine crop seeds passed the filter and then failed at the build, so they had no Event Shop row at all and the Grove Exchange refused roughly nine clicks in sixteen on a four coin row.

Ground, glass and weather

Every plot carries a small record in the chunk, and that record is evaluated lazily when something touches it. Elapsed world days are charged once and capped, so a field you left alone for a month does not owe you a month of accumulated anything. A dormant field does not tick, which is the reason a large garden costs the server almost nothing while you are away.

Making soil is a gesture, not a placement. Till the ground, leave the square empty, hold the soil item and right-click that ground. The block underneath becomes the soil and the plot is recorded in the same action. If a plant is already standing there, sneak and right-click the ground below it instead. Putting the support block down by hand writes no record at all, which is the single most common way to conclude that soils are broken when they are simply absent.

Amendments and the blight remedy work the same way and print their cost before the click that charges it. Be aware of one honest gap: of the seven configured amendment tokens only bone meal resolves to a real item on the shipped configuration, and the in-game guide says so and names the key rather than pretending the other six exist.

Water became a growth gate in 2.0.2, so it is now both a condition for growth and a term in the harvest roll. Seasons are derived from world time rather than from a new clock, which keeps them consistent across restarts and avoids the daytime-thunderstorm problem that a light-based reading has.

A greenhouse is judged as a shell around the plot, from the cell you stand in, and any full block may form it. There is no separate roof rule.

ConditionShipped defaultNote
Interior volumeat least 27 blocksMeasured by flooding outward from the cell above the plot, so a one block cupboard does not qualify.
Openingsat most 4An opening is a gap the flood escapes through. Doors, trapdoors and fence gates are shell, not openings.
Glass shareat least 0.50Glass or panes of any colour, tinted included, against everything else in the shell. Configurable from 0.50 to 0.75.
Bounding box15 wide, 7 tall, 15 deepThe scan stops there, so a greenhouse larger than this is not judged as one structure.

When a build does not qualify, the readout names the first failing condition and its coordinates rather than repeating the recipe at you.

Bees are the vanilla bees. Pollination observes them instead of simulating a second population, so hives you already have keep working and nothing new spawns. /apiary reads back honey, pollination and range. Blight is evaluated on touch like everything else and spreads only to orthogonally adjacent plots of the same species, so a mixed bed limits its own damage.

The cafe, the kitchen and the brewing stand

Coffee runs a chain, and every arrow in it is a place that can refuse you with a reason: cherry, pulp, green bean, roast, grind, brew, serve. The cafe ships nineteen items, twelve of them chain goods (six of which are grounds) and seven drinks, across nine screens reached from /cafe.

Four structures do the work. You build them from ordinary blocks and the server detects them at any rotation.

StationWhat it doesWorth knowing
RoasterTurns green beans into roastThe level is a function of elapsed time since the batch started, not a progress bar.
GrinderTurns roast into groundsSix of the twelve chain goods are grounds, one per roast level.
BrewTurns grounds into a drinkSeven drinks, each with its own base.
ServerySells drinks to other players over a counterA barrel as the centre, any lantern above it, and two copper blocks beside it, either opposite each other or forming a corner. Any weathering stage of copper counts.

The roast deserves a note, because it is the part people expect to behave badly. A batch is a stamp: owner, beans, start time, heat and quality. There is no stored progress and no clock to pause. The level is read from how long it has been since it started, so a restart applies nothing at all and cannot apply twice, downtime counts exactly like uptime, and an absence of any length reads as Burnt rather than wrapping around to perfect. The heat is frozen when the batch starts and deliberately never re-read, so swapping magma for a campfire halfway does not walk the roast backwards. At the shipped default a step takes thirty seconds and there are five levels.

The Servery went through a real fix in 2.0.5. It used to demand copper on two adjacent sides, which meant the obvious build with copper on opposite sides was rejected at every rotation while the instruction described it. Both arrangements count now, the old builds still detect, and copper that has oxidised since you built it is still copper. /cafe servery here walks your structure cell by cell with coordinates, what is there and what was wanted, and it runs whether the counter works or not.

A servery sale moves coins from the buyer to you, minus a house rate that goes to a faction treasury. It mints nothing and it is not a faucet.

Garden ingredients enter brewing through the vanilla brewing stand rather than replacing it, so the stand's own tick drives them and there is no separate machine to learn. Brewing is denied per item by default and opted into, which is why a flower is not an accidental potion base. Effects are honest about what they are: a vanilla effect with chosen parameters, a keyed attribute modifier, or a tracked state with its own timer. Coffee has a cost attached, Jittery, which takes bow accuracy if you drink too much inside a window. /effects tells you what the garden has currently put on you.

Herbarium, Codex and Garden Shows

Three surfaces keep score of what you have done, and they do different jobs.

The Herbarium (/botany) records what you have found. For each species it holds a bit per genotype, so a full species record is thirty-two bytes whatever the locus count. Its rewards are derived from the record rather than granted by a transaction: perks are either informational or cosmetic, and there is deliberately no economic kind, so collecting moves no money in either direction. Milestones latch once earned, and they are measured against the genotypes that are actually reachable rather than against the declared list, because measuring against the declared list would silently make some milestones impossible forever. Opening the screen sweeps what you are already carrying, so a long-standing farmer does not start from zero.

The Codex (/gardencodex, also codex and gcodex) is where the explanations live: four sections, twenty-one topics, on screens rather than in chat. It is a second rendering of the garden's own tables, never a second copy of them, so every number on a card is read from the thing it describes. If a feature is gated off on this server, its card says so and names the setting.

Garden Shows (/gardenshow) are the competitive end. Nine criteria, each graded from Poor to Excellent on a 0 to 4 scale, giving 36 as the maximum. Fifteen is the lowest total that wins anything, and the entry screen quotes that before the fee is charged.

AwardTotalPrize
Gold30 and above1,500 coins
Silver-gilt24 to 29900 coins
Silver19 to 23500 coins
Bronze15 to 18250 coins
Best in Showhighest total, ties share it1,000 coins on top

The money has two legs that never touch. The entry fee is a burn: 250 coins for the first entry, 50 more for each entry already taken, capped at 2,000, with at most 24 entries in a show. It funds nobody, not the pool and not the next entrant. Prizes come out of the server's event account and are capped at 10,000 coins per show; a prize larger than the account holds is reduced to what is there and the winner is told it was reduced, rather than the difference being conjured. A full show with every entrant taking Gold is still a net sink.

Judging happens on command and never on a timer. It reads a volume of 49 by 25 by 49 blocks around your entry, it never loads a chunk to do it, and an unloaded corner is counted, skipped and reported on your card so a depressed mark has a stated reason. An entry is judged once and cannot be re-judged, and the fee is never refunded, including for a season that turns before you are judged. All three of those clauses are on the entry card before the click that charges you.

What the update changed elsewhere

Two changes reach outside the Garden and you should know about both.

The profession count went from 15 to 21. Botanist, Florist, Beekeeper, Arborist, Barista and Chef joined the existing fifteen. The job list pages fourteen at a time, so it is now two pages with seven on the second, and both pages are painted and clickable. Each of the six can be switched off independently, and their experience routes through the same handler as every other job, so the AFK, pattern and diminishing-returns layers apply to them exactly as they do to the older trades.

Company charters went to 22 across 21 trades. Seven were added, not six: the Roastery and the Cafe both anchor on Barista, which would have left Arborist as a trade with no charter, so the Arboriculture Company exists to close that. A charter is one predicate at one door: it decides which sectors a company's consignment desk will capture. It is not a payroll rule and not a shop entry, and a company still pays its wages regardless of what its charter covers.

CharterTradeSectors it captures
RoasteryBaristaFood
CafeBaristaFood
Nursery and Seed HouseBotanistHerb
FloristFloristHerb
Apiary WorksBeekeeperFood, Herb
Arboriculture CompanyArboristFood, Block
KitchenChefFood

Founding costs did not change and they are per charter, not per trade: a 25,000 coin charter fee from your wallet, 100,000 coins of minimum founding capital moved from your bank account into the company, and one company slot. A Barista who wants both a Roastery and a Cafe therefore pays twice, uses two slots, and can be on the clock at one of them at a time.

The Expedition system was deleted. Forty-two files and roughly 10,500 lines went, including the seven screens that belonged to it, and /expedition is gone from the server. Nothing was lost with it, because it never ran: the feature shipped switched off on the day it was written, so the subsystem was never constructed, no listener was ever registered, the dungeon world was never created and the compass recipe never existed. If you find an old mention of expeditions anywhere, read it as history.

One quiet consequence is worth recording. A helper that answered "is this the dungeon world?" was called from thirty-three places across nineteen surviving files, guarding exclusions in chunk sweeps, NPC spawns, graves, shops, crops and teleports, and it had always answered no because it resolved through a subsystem that was never on. It was replaced with a plain check on the world's name, so those exclusions now work for the first time rather than disappearing with the feature.

Where to start

If you want one path through your first hour: get a seed, till a square and leave it empty, hold a soil item and right-click that ground, plant, then right-click the plant to read the plot back. If the readout names your species and a stage, the plot is real and everything else builds on it.

Seven commands cover the whole layer. Typing any of them bare opens its screen rather than printing a wall of text, and every screen has a Bedrock form behind it, so you can complete all of it by typing on either platform.

CommandVerbsWhat it opens
/farm9The garden hub: your plots, the season, greenhouse status, quality.
/gardencodex3The Codex: 21 topics across 4 sections, every number read live.
/botany8The Herbarium: what you have found, your milestones and perks.
/apiary4Hives: honey, pollination and range.
/cafe16The cafe: stations, stock, prices and takings.
/gardenshow7Shows: schedule, entry, judging and scorecards.
/effects4What the garden has currently put on you.

From here, eleven sibling articles go deeper. This is a sensible reading order if you are starting from nothing.

Elsewhere in this wiki: Farming for the harvest funnel that hemp and cannabis already used and that the Garden extends, Processing and the still for the Herbalist's Station, Professions for how the six new trades rank up beside the other fifteen, Companies for what a charter is worth, Custom items and pack for why the resource pack matters, and Command reference for everything in one list.