Drawing Garden

What it is

Drawing Garden is a patch of brown soil, drawn as rows of little wavy furrows across the whole browser window, that you plant with emoji. Drag your cursor across it and flowers and plants sprout wherever you have been, each with a small sound of its own once you have clicked to turn the audio on. That is the entire site. There is no menu, no goal and no save, only the garden you make and the noise it makes while you make it.

How to play

Click once, as the page asks, so the sounds can play. Then drag, and plants sprout along your path, pink blossoms first, wherever the pointer has been. Turn the sound up, and go back over a patch to see what else comes up. When the garden is full, reload for fresh soil, or keep going and see how dense a bed can get.

What makes it different

It is gardening with the waiting taken out. What lifts it above a plain drawing toy is the sound: click once and planting makes noise. The furrowed background and the emoji plants are a deliberately low-tech combination, and it works because nothing about it tries to be more than it is: no palette, no brush size, no share button, just soil and whatever you drag across it.

Why it is on Bored

Oddly satisfying is for loops and fidgets that soothe, and this is a fidget with a soundtrack. It is a good page to have open during a call, and a better one to hand to someone who says they are not creative, because there is no way to do it wrong.

Tips

• Click first, or you will wonder where the sound is
• Try a single slow line across the whole screen before you fill it
• Headphones if you are not alone, the garden is not silent
• Reload for a fresh bed once yours is full

FAQ