Landscaping for Eleblorb: grounds that belong to the place

Landscape is not leftover space and plants are not confetti. Terrain, geology,
water, lava, planting, and ground dressing form one environmental system. Every
element has a job (drainage, access, heat, food, medicine, shade, boundary,
shelter, screening, work, or beauty) and a logic (why it exists there and
who maintains or responds to it). A single flower repeated fifteen times is a
failure. Read architecture first for districts, plots, routes, utilities,
hazards, and gates; this skill resolves the ground between buildings without
moving those fixed systems.

0. Process

1. What is this ground for? A kitchen garden feeds a household, a physic garden supplies herbs to the village, an orchard gives fruit and a place to sit, a green is shade and gathering space, a hedge is a boundary or a windbreak, a verge is wear.
   A volcanic terrace may instead shed ash, vent pressure, carry a thermal
   service, provide a cooled gathering shelf, or control access to lava.
   First decide whether living plants can survive there at all. When they
   cannot, landscape through geology, water or lava, wind and snow, heat,
   mineral deposits, civic sculpture, light, paving, shelter, and framed views.
   Never add token greenery merely because an outdoor space feels empty.
2. Who tends it? The bible says: Oswin tends hedges, Wren the physic garden, Mira sweeps the green near her door. Tending shows: tidy where cared for, wilder where not.
3. Layout from use. Paths and gates first (see architecture), beds and plantings between them, tall things where they shade or screen, low things near doors and windows.
4. Layer (section 2) from the biggest structure down to ground cover.
5. Review from eye height at the door, at the window, along the lane and from above.

0a. Botany: plant the ecosystem before the garden

Before any settlement planting, work out what would grow there without people,
then what the people brought and tend.

1. Climate and exposure. Prevailing wind, rainfall, sun and salt. Windward
   and leeward faces differ; so do valley floors, ridges and coasts.
2. Geology and soil. Young lava or tuff carries pioneers and bare rock;
   old, weathered ground carries forest; sand carries strand plants.
3. Zones. Lay out bands from water to summit (reef, strand, coastal forest,
   lowland, valley, ridge) and give each a short palette of plants that
   genuinely grow together.
4. People's plants. Crops, medicine, fibre and ornament belong where people
   live and farm, and should reflect who brought them and why.
5. Status. Distinguish native plants, plants a people introduced long ago,
   and modern introductions, and never use species that are invasive in the
   real ecosystem being modelled.
6. Character per place. Neighbouring islands, slopes or valleys get distinct
   plant characters, not the same mix.

Regional palettes live in references/: hawaiian_flora.md for the Ocean
Kingdom, southeast_asian_rainforest_flora.md for the Plant Kingdom, southeast_asian_karst_flora.md for the fishing village's limestone islets,
chihuahuan_desert_flora.md for the Rock and Ground Kingdom. Add a reference file for any new region rather than inventing plants
per scene.

1. Principles

• Mass planting, not scatter. Plant in clumps and drifts of a single kind (5, 7, 9 or more), with a few companions, never one flower per spot in a grid. Vary spacing and height. Odd numbers read as natural.
• Beds have edges and paths. A bed is a defined shape (stone, timber or woven edge, or a mounded soil bank) with a worn path beside it. A kitchen garden is a few rectangular raised or edged beds (superellipse-rounded corners) of one crop each, with an aisle, a gate at one end and a compost heap, water barrel, bean poles or trellis and perhaps a scarecrow. Rows exist inside a bed, as ridges or lines of plants that are clearly the same crop, close together and dense enough to read as a crop.
• Threshold planting. Low shrubs or lavender at a doorstep corner, a climber on a porch post, a pot at the step. Never in front of the door or across a path.
• Foundation planting under windows. Hedges or shrubs below windows must stay below the sill (about 0.9 m) and sit 0.6 m or more off the wall so they do not touch it. Keep one metre clear either side of a door.
• Boundaries. Hedges and fences enclose something and have a gate (see architecture). A woven hedge is dense, even, 1.0 to 1.3 m, with a few taller standards. A mixed hedgerow along a lane has varied heights and wild gaps where an animal path crosses.
• Trees have positions. Shade trees stand south or west of the house they shade, in groups of two or three of mixed height at a green's edges, never in a regular line unless it is an orchard (staggered rows, 4 to 6 m apart). Keep trunks clear of doors, windows, lanes and roofs: crown radius plus 1.5 m. A fruit tree near the kitchen door, a big tree where people gather.
• Species fit the place. Hardy herbs and vegetables near a house, fruit trees behind, willows and reeds by water, pines on cold slopes, shrubs and wild grass at the wild edge. Keep the palette small (four to six kinds per settlement) and repeat it for coherence.
• Ground tells use. Worn ground follows the flow of traffic: it runs unbroken from where people start to where they are going, and it connects neighbouring worn areas (doorstep, yard, lane, gate, bench) instead of leaving a gap of unworn grass between them. Worn dirt at doors, gates and under benches; short grass on the green; long grass and wildflowers along fences, walls and the unmown margins; mud and trampled earth at troughs and wells; gravel or flagstone aprons at working yards; moss on north faces and damp corners.
• Water edges. Reeds, rushes and flat stones in clumps; lily pads in still corners; a shelving bank, not a vertical wall; a place to stand or drink.
• Seasonal and ageing signs. A leaning bean pole, a neglected corner, fallen fruit, a patch of nettles, leaves swept into a corner. Do not make everything pristine.
• Hide and frame. Plant to screen service yards (privies, bins, wood stacks) from the front, and to frame the best view from the green.
• Scale and clearance. Nothing in the 2 m of clear space in front of a door, in the 1.2 m of a path, in a gate swing, or in the fall line of a roof.

2. Layers

1. Terrain features. Mounds, banks, terraces, rocks in clusters of 3 to 5 with a big anchor and small satellites, stone walls, steps.
2. Structure planting. Trees, hedge lines, windbreaks.
3. Garden beds. Edges, soil, crops or flowers in masses, trellis and poles.
4. Understorey. Shrubs, climbers, berry canes, herb borders.
5. Ground cover and detail. Grass variation, flowers drifting into lawn, moss, fallen leaves, pebbles, wear patches, tracks.
6. Furniture of the garden. A bench, a watering can, a barrow, a barrel, a trough, a well, a cold frame, a cloche, a bird bath, a compost heap, a stack of pots, a scarecrow.

3. Garden and grounds types

Kitchen garden. Four to six beds of mixed crops (beans on poles, cabbages, onions, roots), a central path from the rear door to the gate, an herb bed by the door, a water barrel, a compost heap in the corner, a hedge or fence on the sides, a fruit bush against a wall.

Physic garden. Small raised beds in a formal pattern, each a distinct plant group (lavender, sage, chamomile, comfrey), labelled by colour and shape only, with a drying shed or rack close by.

Orchard. Staggered rows of fruit trees on grass, a bench under one, a ladder, baskets, a gate at one end.

Village green. Short grass, two or three big shade trees in a loose group, a few flower beds near the civic building and inn, benches facing the fountain, stone edging along the worn paths. Mira sweeps the cobbles by the inn door.

Farm and mill yards. Hard-packed earth and cobbles, stacked sacks and logs, a trough, a cart, a hedge or fence enclosing it with a wide gate; kitchen garden tucked behind the house.

Wild margins. Hedgerows, long grass, nettle patches, boulders and brambles at the edge of the settlement; Wren patrols them and knows which gaps are repaired.

Pond and stream. Banks with reeds, rushes and flat stones; a flat landing where villagers draw water; a few trees on the sunny side.

4. Constraints specific to Eleblorb

• Build every plant and garden object from SuperEgg parts (NatureProps builders where they exist); add a new NatureProps or VillageWorks builder rather than hand-placing primitives in a generator. Hedges, beds, mounds and rocks use soft SuperEggs; poles, trellises, stakes and edging use squarish ones.
• Collision: trunks, hedges, beds' edging, rocks, walls and garden furniture are solid (use CollisionPolicy and the parkour policy where the top is a landing); foliage tips, flowers, grass tufts and ground cover are decorative.
• Performance: place plants in clusters through a helper that reuses a small set of meshes; keep the number of unique materials small.
• Terrain: the ground is a coarse grid (about 18 m cells). Plant to the sampled ground height, and do not rely on fine terrain changes for beds; use built soil mounds and edging.
• Building terrain is coordinated with architecture. Preserve each approved
  foundation socket, retaining face, floor datum, threshold landing, drainage
  direction, and terrain exclusion. Never raise decorative ground to conceal a
  floating building or leave terrain collision running through a floor.
• Ground paint (worn paths, wear patches) is a decal; use it for worn earth around gates and doors.
• No text, no instruction.

4a. Ground dressing never enters a building (Snow Village, 2026-10-07)

A walkthrough found a snow drift inside a Snowrest Inn guest room, clipping
through two beds. The cause was in placement, not in sequence:

• The banks ignored every building. _bank_blocked() in
  ice_kingdom_village.gd skips all solids of kind "building" (meant to skip
  the bank's own house). So a drift placed 1.3 m off one wall could land
  inside the attached inn wing, or a neighbour.
• The banks used the nominal box. They were placed from the building's
  cells rectangle, which omits attached wings, lean-tos, vestibules and
  galleries.
• Decorative props escaped every audit. Drifts have no collision, so the
  clearance audit, which checks solids and furniture, never saw them.

The rules:

• Place dressing against the built envelope. Every drift, bank, mound,
  rock cluster, planting bed or tree is placed against the real envelope of
  every structure: its walls, attached wings, lean-tos, vestibules, galleries,
  stairs, steps and eaves. Never use a nominal box.
• Test everything except the one wall it hugs. Exclude only the wall a
  piece is placed against.
• Decorative is not exempt from clipping. A piece with no collision still
  must not overlap a building, a door clear zone, a route or a furniture
  zone.
• Derive dressing from the same plan data as the buildings, in the same
  build, never from stored positions. When a building changes, its dressing
  moves with it.
• The validator fails any dressing mesh whose bounds enter a building
  envelope or interior. Check from inside every room at eye level as well
  as from the air.

4b. Lessons from the fishing village islets (2026-10-07)

• Model a real landform, not a generic rock. The first islets were uniform
  grey stacks of vertical flutes, and one tall flat-crowned stack read as a
  column. Rebuilt after Phang Nga tower karst, they have:

  • clusters of domed towers;
  • a darker waterline notch;
  • orange and black runnels down the faces;
  • soil ledges;
  • forested crowns;
  • hanging roots and lianas.

  Write the landform's reference (its geology, zones and plants) in
  references/ first, as southeast_asian_karst_flora.md was.

• Avoid grid artefacts. A 1 m grid shelf edge showed as stair steps through
  clear water. Slope or smooth edges that are visible through water or from
  above.

• Plant by zone, in clumps. Plant each zone that can hold soil (ledge,
  crown, notch, seep). Never put a lawn on rock, and never space planting
  evenly along a ledge.

• Neighbours differ. Two islets side by side should each have their own
  character, from their exposure and size.

• Ground is ground. Rock and terrain bodies go on the ground collision
  layer, never the climbable layer; the wrong layer broke swimming under the
  docks.

• Review from the air and at eye level before calling a landscape done.

5. Review checklist

1. Every planting has a job and a tender, and I can say what it is.
2. No rows of single scattered plants; masses, drifts and crops that read as crops.
3. Kitchen gardens have beds, a central path, gate in line with the door, water and compost; orchards are staggered.
4. Nothing in the 2 m before a door, on a path, in a gate swing or against a wall below a window except shrubs under the sill.
5. Trees are grouped and sited for shade and screening, not spaced evenly across the green.
6. Hedges and fences enclose something and have gates.
7. Ground tells use: wear at doors and gates, long grass at edges, mud at troughs.
8. Water edges have reeds and stones, not a hard rim.
9. All plants are SuperEgg builds, solids have collision, small things are decorative.
10. Eye-level shots from the door, window and lane read as a tended, specific place.