An outdoor school · five lessons
GroveA five-lesson course in growing a forest.
Draw a seed to begin
A circle will do, anywhere on the screen
01Lesson 1 · SeedDay 1
Every forest starts smaller than a thumbnail.
A seed is a whole plant, folded up and waiting: a root, a shoot and enough stored food for its first days.
It can wait a long time. It wakes only when water, warmth and air arrive together.
Find three things on the island
Tap the glowing points. Each one is part of today's lesson.
- The seed. Inside the coat: a tiny plant and its packed lunch. It needs no sunlight until it has leaves.
- Bare ground. Without roots or fallen leaves, soil dries out and blows away. A plant's first job is to hold it.
- The shore. Wind off the sea carries salt. Low, tough plants come first and make shelter for taller ones.
02Lesson 2 · SoilDay 2
Before you plant, read the ground.
Soil is layered like a cake: fallen leaves on top, then dark topsoil where most roots feed, paler subsoil, and the rock it all came from.
Dig a little and you can see how much life the ground can carry.
Drag down to dig
Pull the handle down the cut face of the island. Keyboard: focus it and use the arrow keys.
- Leaf litterlast year's leaves, slowly rotting
- Topsoildark, crumbly, where roots feed
- Subsoilpaler clay and stones
- Bedrockwhere the soil came from
03Lesson 3 · RainDay 9
Water is the wake-up call.
A seed drinks before it grows. Water swells it until the coat splits, and the root, always first, turns downward.
Hold on, and let it rain.
Hold to make it rain
Press and hold the glowing button, or hold Space. Let go and the clouds drift off again.
04Lesson 4 · LightDay 30
Then it goes looking for the sun.
Green leaves turn light into sugar. Shoots bend toward the brightest side of the sky, a habit called phototropism.
Walk the sun across the sky and watch the seedling follow.
Drag the sun across the sky
Grab the sun and move it from morning to evening. Keyboard: focus it and use the arrow keys.
05Lesson 5 · ForestYears 1–50
Fifty years, one scroll.
Fast, light-loving pioneers such as birch and pine arrive first. They make shade, and in that shade slower, longer-lived trees take over.
Keep scrolling. Let the years run.
0years of growth
Graduation
Your forest, year 50.
You planted one seed, read the ground, called the rain and walked the sun across the sky. The rest was patience.
That is the whole course. At Grove we teach it outdoors, on real ground, one Saturday at a time.
Your progress
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- Trees on your island
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Five Saturdays · outdoors · all ages