How does our garden grow? It doesn’t. It’s a mess of yellowing, ungrateful plants that rebel against our every effort. Watering doesn’t appease them any more than dumping smelly, nutritious substances on them. The only thing that we can grow successfully is weeds - which grow like weeds, of course. The entire operation is a disaster. It’s gotten so bad that the garden gnomes have left.

Today’s game, How Does Your Garden Grow?, is one that green thumbs of all ages will enjoy. The object of this game is to keep plants in a garden irrigated and healthy under the happy glare of a cheerfully hot sun. To steer your gardener around the gardens, use the arrow keys. To water a plant, use the spacebar. You’ll eventually run out of water unless you collect more as it appears in the form of giant, high, surface tension drips. If you manage to collect a pair of the randomly appearing galoshes, your gardener will pick up his pace and get around the gardens at a less leisurely speed. When you keep the required number of plants alive for the duration of a level you’ll move on to the next. If you answer the bonus question you’ll be awarded with extra points.

How Does Your Garden Grow? is easy to learn but challenging enough to keep players’ interest piqued. The game’s looping music, while appropriate, is deadly annoying and may inspire plant-uprooting tendencies. Thankfully you can turn it off. The graphics top out our cute-o-meter with its happy attitude and chipper solar Kool-Aid Man.

We liked the peppy “pop” sound the plants made when they revived.

GameSpotter is a site that specializes in finding the best Web-based games. Each day we feature a new game on our front page. Each month we add dozens of new games to our hand-edited directory.

[tags]gamespotter,how does your garden grow,gardening game,water plant,gardener galoshes,irrigate[/tags]