101. Garden Life, Cozy Gaming, and the Chelsea Flower Show w/ Kay Luthor

What's up, Plant People? Today's episode blooms with the extraordinary tale of Kay Luther, a Chelsea Flower Show gold medalist turned game developer whose story is as rich and vibrant as the gardens she designs. In an industry where creativity and adaptation are as crucial as soil to seed, Kay shares her journey from the flower-bedecked lanes of Chelsea to the pixel-perfect landscapes of her serene game, "Garden Life." As she weaves tales of her floristry days, the artistry behind each bouquet, and the social media-driven resurgence of houseplants, we're reminded of the unique beauty in every career transition.

Venturing into the heart of the floral design world, we uncover the parallels between arranging flowers and fashion, reflecting on how both fields dance to the rhythm of societal trends. Kay's anecdotes about the meticulous crafting of award-winning floral pieces for the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show draw a vivid picture of success and the humility that walks alongside it. We also turn the soil on "Garden Life," exploring how Kay's floristry skills have blossomed into game development, nurturing a project that marries the unpredictability of nature with the tranquility of gaming.

As we wrap up our time with Kay, the conversation turns towards the emotional investment in launching a new venture and the importance of embracing diverse career paths. With a nod to the cozy gaming community and the floral industry's future, we're invited to consider how our own experiences can cross-pollinate and flourish in unexpected ways. We also get a glimpse into the excitement building up to the release of "Garden Life," where players can cultivate their digital green thumb, and find out where to connect with this budding gaming experience online. Join us in this episode for a tapestry of life lessons, career insights, and the celebration of new growth, both in our gardens and ourselves.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

What is up? Plant people it's time once again for the Plant Thepology podcast, the show where we dive into the lives and careers of some very, very cool plant people to figure out why they do what they do and what keeps them coming back for more. I'm Vikram Baliga, your host and your humble guide in this journey through the green sciences and, as always, my friends, I am so excited to be with you today. Y'all, this was my first interview that I got to record in six months maybe a little bit more and I'm excited for you to get to hear it because it was a lot of fun. This guest actually reached out to me, or her team reached out to me, and I'm not used to teams contacting me like people, with teams being like, hey, it's a new experience for me, but I was so excited to get this email because it's such a cool thing.

Speaker 1: 0:53

So my guest for today is Kay Luther, who is an experienced florist. She's worked in the floral design industry since she was a teenager and has won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show, which is cooler than anything I've ever accomplished in my entire life, which is amazing. And she's the producer on an upcoming game called Garden Life, which is a garden simulator. It's a cozy game and it looks like it's so much fun. I'd actually seen the trailer for Garden Life well before Kay's team ever approached me about doing this interview and about collaborating with them, and then it was just such a thrill to get to hear from them. So you're going to hear about Kay's past. You'll hear about her experience as a florist and her take on the floral design industry and what it's like to work in a flower shop and what competing in something as big and amazing as the Chelsea Flower Show is like. She also talks quite a bit about her experience in getting into game production and what all goes into making a new game, because that's something that, for me, is completely out of my realm of experience, and so it was so amazing getting to pick her brain and hear her thoughts and just learn a little bit more about something that I very much enjoyed video games and about a game that I'm, quite frankly, excited about and just everything that goes into and how she got into it.

Speaker 1: 2:09

So, just as an early plug, we're going to say the several times throughout the episode Garden Life is live on Xbox or is available on Xbox, playstation, pc and some other places as of February 22nd 2024. And I believe it will be on switch in March. So preorder that if you're listening to this as it comes out, or if you're into the future, go pick it up and play it, but without too much more yammering at you. I want you to hear this amazing interview with my new friend, kay Luther. Okay, I am so excited to have you with me today. This is my first face to face interview or virtual interview I've done with someone in a while and I'm really excited to get to talk to you. So thanks for coming on. We're so excited to have you as part of Planth apology.

Speaker 2: 3:09

Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a real honor to be asked and to be the first person back off for a bit of a break as well.

Speaker 1: 3:19

Yeah, it's exciting for me as well. So introduce yourself a little bit. Tell our guests about who you are, where you're from and what you do.

Speaker 2: 3:33

Okay, so my name is Kay Luther, I am a game development producer and we are about to release a game called Garden Life. In my previous career I was a florist and floral designer, so I have come from a background of working with nature for a very long time. I did that career for 15 ish years. Now it's coming up Because I still keep a hand in. Obviously it's very difficult to get out of so I was, but yeah, it's, you can't give up the plants. It's very difficult. I grew up in Bournemouth in the United Kingdom, which is Dorset, so south coast, on the beach, and I've been a gamer and always into nature my entire life, so this became a perfect collaboration for me.

Speaker 1: 4:23

That's so cool and that's, I think, such a different take on just the natural science industry, the green science industry, because it shows just a whole different facet of different ways to approach plants and nature and all that. So you mentioned that you've always been a gamer. You've always loved nature. What kind of games did you play growing up?

Speaker 2: 4:49

Oh, growing up. So even when I was quite little, my dad got me into gaming from about the age of four or five, so I don't know if you're going to know any of them like Riven and Mist, those were his favorite games, played them a lot something called Little Big Adventures as well. That was sort of my first introduction to it. And then I discovered Final Fantasy and PlayStation one and kind of the world expanded for me in terms of games there. Yeah, I found myself absolutely loving RPGs and anything that was beautiful, so anything that had like really nice graphics to it, and I really kind of fell in love with gaming that way and the escapism of it.

Speaker 1: 5:33

That's awesome. And so just just hearing about some of the games you've played there's a lot of I don't know world building, these expansive vistas and scenery and all of that and thinking about I've watched some of the trailers for Garden Life and it I don't know, it has this whole very beautiful feel to it that you might see in this big epic game and more of a cozy take on it, and we'll, I think, approach that a little bit later in the episode. Just talking more about the game specifically, because I'm so interested in this I can't wait to pick up a copy for myself. But what you said, that you've always loved nature, what got you interested in that? I mean, did you go out as a family? Is that the kind of thing you did when you were young?

Speaker 2: 6:18

Yeah, my family are very outdoorsy so they love going for walks and sort of going around garden centers. My mum has always had a love for plants and flowers so I've always been brought up with, every time you go on a walk, that I would be told what plants and flowers and trees. She would name them all as we were walking around. And she's just learned that in her time and so I've always had that side, which is really nice. And I remember the things like going to my granny's house when I was a kid and being asked to go and pick the lavender so she could make lavender bags.

Speaker 2: 6:56

I mean that coupled with films, anything with Disney, for example. I used to absolutely love Disney when I was a kid and when you look at them and you look back on them from a different perspective, you see the amount of plants that are actually used in these and then you see you start noticing it in things like games as well and it really can build a world and it kind of got my interest peaked that you can see that beauty elsewhere, which is really cool. So I've done a lot of outdoors education, let's say, from that point.

Speaker 1: 7:30

You know it's so funny you say that because so I'm obviously the plant nerd guy. That's apparently become my entire personality is that I'm the plant guy. But I have an eight year old son and when we go out and going to the zoo with me, I think must be a really exhausting experience, because my wife is an animal person, my son's really an animals and I'll just be off looking at trees. You know there'll be a lion and I'll be like, oh, but this tree is cool. And then I'll tell them all about it and they're both just like Okay, like cool, can we look at the animal, it's almost knee jerk.

Speaker 1: 8:08

I can't help it.

Speaker 2: 8:09

Yeah, I'm the same. My husband does exactly the same. When we're going out now and I'm like, oh, it's this plant and used for this, this and this, and he's like I okay that. Or stopping at people's houses and being like, oh, they've got a different variety, I haven't seen that one before. That's also something of an embarrassment sometimes.

Speaker 1: 8:30

Oh, it's okay. So it's funny because we have some similar experiences. We, my wife and I, when my son was very little, would go walk around one part of our neighborhood and there were three or four different landscapes that I just. There were two that I really liked and two that I really just didn't like for a variety of reasons, and I would always take like progress pictures. So we would walk by and I'd pull out my phone I'd be taking pictures of, like these people's homes, which is probably creepy. My wife is like I have to stop doing this. You have to stop doing this.

Speaker 2: 9:05

But did you get good progress pictures?

Speaker 1: 9:07

Oh, absolutely Absolutely, and it's I use them in. Like you know, I'll cut out and make sure there's no identifying information and like use them in a presentation of what's good about this landscape. I'm always a little bit scared that the person who owns that home is going to end up in my audience one day. I'm doing a public talk like oh, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2: 9:28

I'm sure they would be more interested to see the photos of the progress of their garden rather than be annoyed.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Yeah, maybe, so, maybe so. So, as you were, you know learning about plants, do you have any schooling or training in plant science? What did you study? As you were kind of going through.

Speaker 2: 9:49

So I did a. I did a couple of qualifications, all in floristry, so I did my again it's talking in English levels of like my MBQ two and three in floristry. And then I did a higher diploma in floristry as well, which is the level four everyone calls it, and that was that was kind of my formal education in into botany, botany or anything to do with that. I didn't do anything at university. I'm not sort of I didn't go down the classic roads of education and as part of that as well, I got to get hands on experience, because you had to do a set amount of work experience alongside the course to be able to pass. So it was really good being able to learn about it, study it and, at the same time, being able to work with it and understand why it's important. You need these things.

Speaker 1: 10:39

That's so cool I need to. I may pass on your information to a couple of colleagues. We have a floral design program here at my university and they teach. It's taught as a creative art, so across the university students take it. They get a hands on lab experience and I'm excited to share this episode, but also just some of your work with them, because I think that's a cool story for students to hear. But really anyone who's trying to figure out what they want to do to hear is that there's so many paths into all these things and, like, some people get the formal experience, some people do, you know, outside trainings and all of those things are super cool ways to work into what you want to do in your life and I love that story. I think that's such a cool thing that that's something you liked and you found ways to get the knowledge you needed and got to where you are today. I think that's really neat.

Speaker 2: 11:35

Yeah, it was. I wasn't the best person when it came to the education section. I didn't really enjoy the formal learning. Let's say I loved anything creative, I loved making things, I liked seeing things and that was very much more my learning style. So when I came to a point where it was, I'd had something else fall through and I had to pick a college course very quickly. Floristry really stood out to me because I'd had this kind of upbringing of love of nature, loving being able to create things, and I just went. You know what this sounds like the course for me, so it wasn't necessarily a I'm going to do this. This is exactly what I want to do. And even now I'm not a florist working as a florist at the moment. I am now a games producer. So there's always time to sort of change and adapt and still keep the passion alive for the core beliefs of knowing that you like nature essentially.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. So you know, you kind of talked about how you got into it and how that fit into your early life, but my understanding is that you started actually doing it professionally, like in a flower shop, when you were quite young. How did that all come about?

Speaker 2: 12:50

Yeah. So, as I mentioned, you do placements with the college course, which is really great. So you get introduced to a shop and they go, yes, we'll take you on. I mean, obviously, shops are going to love it, it's free work and most of the time you get offered a Saturday job and you're like, oh, okay, I'll do the Saturday job alongside it.

Speaker 2: 13:11

So I started working, doing the Saturday job stuff, and I really want to do more. I don't want to have to work another couple of jobs to keep my college going. I want to do this full time and do my college course. So that's what I did, and I was 16 when I started properly working as an employed florist and I met some incredibly helpful and encouraging shop owners who really kind of helped me get to where I am today, and I really do. I them all and I'm still in contact with them. I still meet up with people that I worked with when I was quite young and now make them feel very old, which is peak, especially when I remind them, oh yes, no, I'm over 30 now and they're like no, you're not.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Yeah, so it's really good, that's awesome, and I think I would like to hear, I'm curious personally about just a little bit of your experience and working in these types of or in this type of a place, because I think people go to the florist or the supermarket or wherever they sell bouquets of flowers and arrangements and things like that and have no concept of everything that goes into that. Because the little bit I've gleaned from my colleagues who teach floral design and work in floral design the stuff here is that there's so much to it, there's so much to think about and so much to remember, from the design side to the plant materials and all of that. So can you sort of without giving you too vague of a question, can you give us just some thoughts and maybe an overview of what it's like to be in that industry, what it's like to work in a shop like this?

Speaker 2: 14:56

Yeah. So the first thing I will say is every shop will give you a different experience. So it's really hard to kind of say that it will be like this. It's different. It's a vast industry, so there's obviously different parts that you can go into and shops tend to sort of have a preference to which side of the work they go for, whether it's the gift side or the wedding side, or events or funerals. They're all sort of different skill sets and also different customers and clients that you work with on a regular basis.

Speaker 2: 15:30

It is very much an underrated skill. From the customer side of things to the technical side of floral design. You need to have both. You need to be able to sort of talk to people, understand what they want, when they're not necessarily knowing what they want and being able to create their vision. So it is a very challenging industry in that side of things. I think for floral design and everything, there's a lot of technicalities out there. What I absolutely love about it is that it's ever changing. If I was to walk back into a shop now and probably do something that I would have done five years ago, they'd look at me like it was crazy and say why aren't you doing it this way, it's a real fast pace. There's always new techniques, always new inspiration. It works with fashion as well. It's very similarities between the fashion industry and floral design.

Speaker 1: 16:26

It's an interesting comparison. I guess I hadn't really thought of it that way, but that makes a lot of sense, that trends change and materials change and what people are interested in. That's really an apt comparison between the floral design industry and the fashion industry. I would say the same is even true on the live plant side. In the landscape industry. It maybe changes a little more slowly in some ways. But I know when I was doing it professionally oh gosh, 10 years ago now that's a little upsetting to think about. The styles I see out there, the ways that landscapes are built and put together and everything are so different even just in the last decade from when I was doing it. In my head somewhere I'm like well, the plants that grow here, the plants that grow here, they don't change that much whatever. But it is interesting how much sort of just public perception and what's going on in the world and what's going on in fashion in a lot of ways changes that. That's a cool thought.

Speaker 2: 17:28

Yeah, I think you're right with saying it changes a little more slowly because a lot of landscape you take longer to be able to get the results. It's not a quick. I mean not to say that the floristry and floral design is quick, but it's quicker than trying to grow a garden. But I'm sure you get the same kind of sense of when you a new variety of a plant comes out and you're like, oh, that changes things. Even when you go to older properties and you look at the way the gardens are landscaped, it's very different to how they're landscaped now because the use of them have changed.

Speaker 2: 18:02

So when we change our habits, the style of things change. Just where I was saying with fashion. So fashion in wedding industry, let's say, for example, wedding dresses change every year. Every year there's a new style of dress and that is the dress that everybody is after. You need your bouquet to match your dress. The bouquet is changed every year and it's a follow on kind of thing. It's the same with house plants as well. At the moment, obviously, it's still very popular to have a lot of house plants in your house and being able to sort of cover a wall, for example, with all of your plants. It's really wonderful and it's a fashion at the moment. You can date that back to Victorian area, when it was a very statement to have certain plants in the house, for example.

Speaker 1: 18:46

Yeah, House plants are very like Instagrammable right now. I think about this a lot because when I was in college in the early 2000s so I started college in 2005, got into horticulture and all that that was not cool. I was not cool for being the plant guy. People still had house plants and liked house plants. But as social media has sort of skyrocketed over the past couple of decades and people are taking more snapshots and little pictures of their life and trying to, it kind of works both ways. There's this weird feedback loop where people try to make their houses more Instagrammable and then Instagram changes the way they think about their homes and things like that. Yeah, Now being the plant guy is relevant and that's not something I ever saw coming when I was going through school. I was just like I like plants, I like gardening and landscaping, I just want to do this. But it's an interesting trend that I hope keeps going for a while because it lets me have a podcast and do social media and all that stuff, so I'm okay with it.

Speaker 2: 19:52

I mean, yeah, it's really great that being the plant nerd or the flower nerd, as I used to call it for me has now become a fashionable thing. Before you know, florists were kind of seen as older people who sat in a shop, and now it's a little bit more fashionable. People have a lot more in their homes and, yeah, the house plant boom is fantastic. I don't have the patience for it. I really commend everybody who has one of those Instagrammable homes with loads of house plants. I don't have an excuse now. I always use the excuse that I worked with plants all the time so I didn't want to come home and take care of plants. And now the thought of buying a lot of house plants is pretty, as it would be. I'm just like oh yeah, but the care behind it and the attention it's a lot to do.

Speaker 1: 20:40

It's a lot of work. Oh, I use that excuse constantly. By the way, I have run our greenhouse on campus I've stepped out of that role for the past nearly six years and I'm like, oh, I dealt with tropical plants all day. Now I just have a bunch of crappy looking house plants in my house and I'm just like, well, I'm just not good at it, this is not my thing.

Speaker 2: 21:00

It's fine, it's absolutely fine. I think everybody who works with them has this situation at home. I've even got a piece of artwork on my wall which is like a dead plant and just been like the florist plant.

Speaker 1: 21:13

That's funny. Completely apropos of nothing, there's a dried leak on my bulletin board in my office that somebody had put in my office one day and I put googly eyes and a mustache on it and now I can see it over the top of my computer it's my friend in my office. So one thing I definitely wanted to discuss with you is you know this, but our listeners may not that you are an award winning florist. You're not just a someone who's worked in a shop. You are decorated for your work and you competed and exhibited at the Chelsea Floral Show. How did that come about? Tell us about that. That is such a cool thing.

Speaker 2: 21:55

Yeah, so when I first started my college course, they did a trip to go to Chelsea Flower Show because, obviously, being in England, it's only a couple of hours away and it's a real big thing, absolutely fantastic. And we went there and my eyes just opened. I was really young and I was like I really want to do this, this is what I want to do. And I saw the young florists of the year competitions happening and at the time I was quite young, I had long hair and it was a year that they had hats as the competition piece, so it was like hats that you'd wear to Ascot or something. And they asked me to put one of these things on my head and I was like, yeah, of course, not a problem. And then I took a good look at it and I went I can do this. And that was that inspiration. It was that moment that I just went okay, I want to win this one day. And that's where it kind of started is a little bit of an obsession that I wanted to get that to that point. I saw that and I really wanted to go for it.

Speaker 2: 22:58

I didn't get there easily. It wasn't a smooth journey, so it doesn't work like this now I don't know how it works now, so this is very outdated information, but what you had to do is compete in heats. So you had to do regional heats that you would get marked on a set piece that you would bring in and then you'd have to win that to go through to Chelsea Flower Show to compete in the final. And I did a couple of those failed miserably, obviously. First time. Second time, I got through.

Speaker 2: 23:29

In the first time that I was at Chelsea Flower Show I was so excited, but the piece that I made I am embarrassed of it was so bad and I got marked really badly and I was just, I wasn't devastated because I'd gotten there and I went. Okay, I now know what I did wrong and it took me two more attempts and the second time I went I got a silver medal. That was the oh gosh. Year is 2012,. I think that I got the silver medal. It was the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. It was a big chandelier that I made, and for the year that I won the title Young Florist of the Year and the Gold Medal, it was 2016 and it was a Brazilian headdress that had to be wearable for someone to dance in a carnival. So yeah, it was a journey. It wasn't easy, it took years to get there, but I did and I was very happy with that.

Speaker 1: 24:23

So cool and I've seen pictures of the floral headdress you designed and it's incredible. I mean, it's stunning, it's beautiful. Thank you. I know it's been a few years, but what do you remember? What kind of plant materials you used, what kind of flowers you picked? It was very much in like the red orange color scheme, if I remember correctly.

Speaker 2: 24:42

Yeah, I used sort of reds and cerises through to yellow, a very kind of burnt yellow, though I can remember the flowers that I used because it's a list of my favorites of competition work and I have reminders on my tattoos of what flowers I actually ended up going for. So one of the things I always used to start with was hanging anamaranthus, in particular the Green Goddess one, one of my favorites I also used now I always say this one wrong, so I know how to spell these. I'm not so good at saying them. Onythagolom or Chincherinchie. Use the orange, one of that. Renunculus, various types of roses, miniature and large phallinopsis, orchids, gloriosa, sinechio.

Speaker 2: 25:37

Knowing me, I would have used Sinechio, definitely I'm not looking at it now, I feel like I've forgotten half of it. But yeah, so I tended to use those kind of flowers and it was all glued onto a wool base, so I used a lot of aluminium, wire and wool. When you can seal the flowers with a special floral glue and then you can place them as you wish, and, being able to use the wool, you can spray it beforehand and it keeps it that fresh for just a few more days longer. Yeah, because it gets very hot in those tents.

Speaker 1: 26:14

I bet it does.

Speaker 1: 26:16

And that seems like such a long and detailed process and I'll share the news article that I saw about your headdress and some things, with the show notes and this, just so people can take a look at it because it is gorgeous, it's so cool and it's you know, I bet that's a cool thing just to have in your I don't know resume or just in your back pockets and oh, you know, I'm a gold medalist and award winner at the Chelsea Flower Show Like that's a cool thing. I would tell people that all the time.

Speaker 2: 26:52

Yeah, it's really cool. This is where I go, very British, and feel like, oh no, I don't blow my own trumpet. I try not to do it so much, but I get told off for not talking about it enough. So, yes, it is really awesome. It is such a big achievement. I could not believe it when I won it. Anyone at that competition will tell you that I did not think I'd got it that year, and it was. It was just a fantastic way to start the year at that time.

Speaker 1: 27:24

Very cool. Well, we'll take a quick break. I'm going to run a midroll real quick and when we come back I want to talk about garden life and how game development works and how you got into that, because that is again such a cool thing, and then we'll get some of your thoughts on the future and and let you plug the game for a while. So take a quick break, we'll be right back. Well, hey, everyone, welcome to the midroll. It's good to see you here again. How's your family? Is your mom doing okay? Have you given your dog a scratch on the head today? Give them one from me. Y'all, thanks so much for listening and being a part of the show. As always, I hope you've enjoyed the first half of this interview with Kay and I'm excited for you to hear more about the game in the second half of this interview. But first I want to thank some people. First, again, you. You are the reason I do this and you're the reason I get to keep doing it. Thanks also to the Texas Tech Department of Plant and Soil Science for sponsoring the show and supporting the show and for just letting me do this. It's amazing that I get to do this. Thanks to the PodFix Network for letting me be a part of the network. You should definitely go check out the PodFix Network and our PodFix family of PodFix shows. I'm going to work that word in a few more times, if I can. If you want to connect with me, you can find me all over social media. Unfortunately, I am the plant prof on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and wherever else I could think to be YouTube. Now, in fact, this podcast is going out on YouTube and if you're watching on YouTube, I'm waving at you right now and I'm showing you something that I'm going to talk about here in a minute. But follow me all the places I would love to connect. You can also get me at Plantropology or Plantropology Pod on Instagram whatever the smoking crater that was Twitter is today, and on YouTube as well. If you have any thoughts, comments, suggestions for upcoming guests, if you just want to tell me that I need to change my hair and get a haircut, you can email me at plantropologypodatgmailcom.

Speaker 1: 29:18

Lots of cool stuff coming up this season on Plantropology. I don't know if season is right I don't really do seasons but since I took six months off, I'm calling this a new season, even though you won't see that anywhere else. I've got some great interviews with people from some of my colleagues to climatologists, to entertainers and communicators and authors and all kinds of really cool folks, so you're going to want to stick around for the rest of the season about Plantropology. And now for another shameless plug, if you didn't listen to my last entire episode of the show. I wrote a book. It's called Plants to the Rescue and, again, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see me holding it up and pointing at it and smiling and stuff like that. If you want to pick up plants to the rescue, you can get it anywhere books are sold.

Speaker 1: 29:59

I am still sorting out, as of the recording of this podcast, how to get signed copies to people. If you're interested, stay tuned. I will hopefully have more information about that by the end of this month, which is February in 2024. If you're watching this in the future hello, future person. I'm glad the planet is still around. That's comforting to me. Anyway, pick up the book, subscribe to Plantropology wherever you're listening. Oh and, by the way, if you don't mind leaving me a rating and review for the show, I wear a size five star rating and I would appreciate hearing your thoughts Still here.

Speaker 1: 30:37

Why are you so? Let's get back to the interview in three, two, one, all right. Well, we are back and, kay, I wanted to talk about Garden Life, because this is such a cool project that you've gotten to work on and it's coming out, I believe, two weeks from today, at the time of the release of this episode. And so give me the pitch for Garden Life. What's the game about? Why should people be excited about it? And I want to talk a little bit about how you got into the making of the game.

Speaker 2: 31:09

Sure, okay. So Garden Life at its heart is a gardening game to relax to. So it's a cozy game where you can create your own beautiful garden in such a stunning environment. A lot of it's about the ambience and how plants grow and being able to create and just sort of witness the beauty of nature. That is the quickest way that I can describe the game.

Speaker 2: 31:32

At the moment, the inspiration for the game is more of the satisfaction from gardening, so we haven't gone down the oh, you need to get the soil acidity right. It needs this kind of fertilizer. It's more to do with how can I make this garden look beautiful? What is exciting about this game is that no two plants are the same, so the team have developed an incredible system that when you grow a plant, it will come out different each time. You won't be able to grow the same plant twice, unless you're very, very lucky. It's all done on a random system, so no two Rows bushes will look the same in the game, which is really, really awesome. Yeah, it's something that we were really keen to get right from nature as well.

Speaker 1: 32:21

No, that's so interesting too because you're right that a lot of times with you know I haven't played a lot of this style of game. There are a couple I've gotten into recently. My wife and my son play a little bit more in that. You know sort of realm than I do probably. But a lot of things in video games tend to be kind of like baked in, like this is what this plant looks like, this is what this creature looks like. It's always like repetitive and the same, and I think that is such a cool idea because you're absolutely right, you could have a hundred thousand Rows bushes in a field in nature and no two of them would be exactly the same. There's so much variation in life and that's such an interesting accomplishment in a game because, again, you don't see that kind of thing much.

Speaker 2: 33:12

Yeah, I think when you look at a lot of games, you know plants are secondary asset. In Garden Life, plants are the stars of the game. So this is where more attention has been put into them and it's you know, you're saying, with those hundred Rows bushes in a field, for example, one of them will always just have like a couple of flowers on it. You're like why? There it's. It's a real interesting way to be able to to show off that nature can be beautiful. It doesn't have to be a perfect ball of a rose bush each time, and I think that's really cool to see and it is so relaxing when you're watching these plants grow as well.

Speaker 1: 33:47

Well and we talked earlier about how you've sort of grown up playing video games. That is something that you know, you did with your father and just you know something that was very formative for you as a child and through your life. So it must be kind of a thrill and kind of a big accomplishment to get into the production of something like this, which is just incredible. How did how did that happen? How did you get to a point where you got to produce this game?

Speaker 2: 34:13

So when the pandemic hit, I was working predominantly in events as a florist and I was working freelance and what I always used to do is always used to take January and part of February off work. That was my holiday for the year. It'd be like there's not as many events New Year's is done, it will pick up around Valentine's Day and it will be fine. Pandemic hit in March and I was like I should not have taken those two months off. So it was. It was a very me jumping on opportunities. So I met up with the live studios who are the company that I work for, the development company in Austria, and I went out there. They met me and they thought that I would make a really good project manager for trainee project manager at the time and I was like, fantastic, you're giving me a shot.

Speaker 2: 35:10

I actually moved out to Austria with my husband and we worked out there and it was absolutely wonderful. And I saw this pitch for a gardening game. I got told about it and I was like, oh, okay, and I jumped on it and I went, I can run with this, I can help with this, and I kind of started taking the role of wanting to sort of become a producer. I wasn't quite sure at this point. I was still like learning about the game development process and I really ran with it. And when I got given the opportunity and I just jumped because I knew that I was invested in the games development already from the pitch phase I was working with some fantastic people to be able to get the design to a really good point and I just really believed in this and I knew that with my transferable skills from floristry like I was saying about clients and customers and communication is a big part of the transferable skills from floristry to game development. So that's how I kind of landed up with the producer role at Still Alive.

Speaker 1: 36:20

That's really cool.

Speaker 1: 36:21

That's such a good story too.

Speaker 1: 36:24

I think something that I tell students a lot and something I tell people that I just talk to a lot is that sometimes it's sort of hard to see, except in retrospect, how all of your different experiences line up to take you to where you are right, that everything you do sort of in some ways can inform the next thing, or either in a positive way or in a oh I really don't want to do that again sort of way.

Speaker 1: 36:50

But I love hearing you talk about how your skills as a florist and customer management and dealing with people because that is any service industry or any public facing industry just the dealing with people is such a skill that you have to have how that led into something that seems completely like you know, I think on paper. If you said you know game production and floral design, they seem like they're in two whole different categories of life in general. But I love the story that one of them helped inform the other that you can use your experiences regardless of where you've come from to where you're going. I think that's a good story for people to hear, because I think it's maybe one we don't hear enough. We're always told pick a thing and stick to the thing and this is your thing now, whereas no, life is complicated and life is long and we find different paths and I love that.

Speaker 2: 37:47

I don't think anybody should ever be tied to one career if they're not enjoying it. I'm very much an opportunist. If I see something that interests me and excites me, I will take that opportunity and I really implore the people to look at it that way as well. And if there are students listening and they're going oh, I'm working the service job or I'm having to be a waitress for X amount of time, like it's still giving you life skills and it is still so valuable being able to deal with that difficult customer, because your next career, regardless of what it is, could be dealing with somebody else who is being difficult and it's really important being able to recognize how a skill can be used somewhere else.

Speaker 1: 38:32

Yeah, that's such a great thought, I think for sure. So you've answered this a little bit already and talked about sort of the development process and you know, from pitch to development and all of that, how long did it take? It seems like at least a couple of years, right, you said you started in 2020.

Speaker 2: 38:53

Yeah, so two years and, like you said, we release in two weeks, on the 22nd of February, and yeah, it's been an absolute ride and it's ups and downs. Obviously, game development is a roller coaster, but it's so fantastic, especially when you've got a good team around you as well. That is the most important thing is, if you've got a good team, you can be able to develop the best kind of game that you want. I did have a few challenges with teaching the plants, though that was fun.

Speaker 1: 39:27

Teaching the plants like how to grow and how to look like plants, and things like that.

Speaker 2: 39:32

Yeah, if I said to you describe to me how a sunflower grows in words, how would you, oh gosh yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:43

That's a hard. I have never thought that is such a hard question.

Speaker 2: 39:47

Yeah, yeah, it's a really hard question to answer. You know you've spent your entire career around plants and being able to it's what we found ourselves doing was looking at a lot of time lapse videos and there's a lot of them out there on YouTube so you can look at these time lapse videos of how plants grow and it is absolutely beautiful. But, yeah, it's really difficult to describe. So that was a challenge in itself when it's like you know about plants. Yes, of course, can you describe how this grows? Sure, give me a few minutes.

Speaker 1: 40:21

Yeah, well, especially and that's just it. Like I think if I thought about it for a while I probably could but especially too, if you're working with, like, you've got a diverse team of people, and so even some of the terminology or the ways that like you and I, as plant people, would conceptualize and think about the development of a flower and how it grows, and all of that is probably a foreign language to so many people who are working on the technical side of production and design and all of that. So I think, yeah, being able to reframe that into words is so such an interesting challenge.

Speaker 2: 40:56

Definitely. I mean, it goes both ways. If somebody was trying to explain to me the technicalities of the code that they're writing, for example, I can understand the basics, but I cannot understand the entire thing of what they're doing, which is, you know, you don't necessarily need to understand everything it's. Can you communicate the important parts? Can you ask the right questions and I think that's a lot of what game development is is can you ask the right question to get the correct answer?

Speaker 1: 41:24

Yeah, that's. That's a good way to look at it too. Can you write, can you ask the right questions to get the right answer? I'm going to think about that all day. That's a good one, so it has to be an awesome feeling having this release here in the next couple of weeks. Right After all of this work and all of this time put in, I and I kind of remember I had a book come out last year. I wrote a book that released last summer, and I remember the couple of weeks leading up to it. I was excited and tired and nervous. Like how are you feeling about the launch of this game?

Speaker 2: 41:59

Excited, tired and nervous Just to parrot you there. Yeah, it's, it's pretty exciting. I'm really looking forward to the launch of this game. I've got some fantastic views on it as well. I love the game. I think it is one of the most relaxing games to play out there. And yeah, tired, yeah, definitely, it's a long road. It's two years of work and obviously you know we are kind of at that point now and it's it's nerve-wracking because you don't know how it's going to be received. And yeah, I've just got to keep away from those comments at the beginning.

Speaker 1: 42:44

Oh, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh gosh. Yes, I understand that so well as someone who creates media on the Internet all the time. I wrote a children's book about plants and climate change and I made the mistake of reading like reviews from different places and it was. The thing is like it was very well received. Just seeing what I've seen, I know your game is going to do so well. I know people are going to love it, but it's like you get a thousand positive comments and then the one critical one, at least for me, lives in my brain forever, like it's my best friend for the rest of my life.

Speaker 2: 43:23

Yeah, yeah, I'm the same on this. I still have weddings to this day that will haunt me and certain customers to this day that will haunt me, and I'm like that was 10 years ago. Let it go. Let it go now. Yeah, no, so I'm going to do my best to not do that.

Speaker 1: 43:44

That's awesome. Looking forward to the future, a little bit Like what do you see as the future of the floral industry or of this type of gaming, this cozy gaming, and then like where do you see yourself headed? Do you want to create more of this kind of thing? Are there other things in your mind that you want to go after? What does the next five or 10 years look like in this space?

Speaker 2: 44:07

Okay, I'll take the floral industry one first, because it's very difficult to go into too much detail about that. I don't know is going to be the quickest answer. It's going to follow fashion, like it always has done. So it's predicting the trends, seeing what's coming up next, who's getting married and celebrity culture, those kinds of things. Looking at that and looking at the styling going down from there. But I think one exciting thing for the floral industry are the adapting to sort of more ecological ways of working, sort of not using a floral foam that doesn't buy a degrade for example, there's now buy a degradable foam that you can buy. But there's also people I've noticed going back to the traditional methods of floral history, using moss and straw and wire and being able to reuse frames, which is really, really cool, so that's really good. And also adapting to the consumer habits. Right now, most florists will have a plethora of plants, house plants, all in different variations of green. Being able to adapt to the new habit of the next trend is going to be really, really interesting as well. So whether that's, I think dried flowers tried to make a comeback but didn't take off so well. Maybe it's coming back again, I don't know. It's going to be exciting.

Speaker 2: 45:26

I always keep my eye on it, though I can't help myself too much. So cozy gaming, though. There are some really cool releases coming out soon, obviously Garden Life being one of them but I'm really excited to see the space and how it develops. It's I'd say it's still quite a growing and it's kind of learning what cozy gaming means, and it means something different to some people as well. But I would like to see the return of a couch co-op game in the cozy space. I think that there is a place in the market for this. I think this could be something really cool being able to sort of game together in person on something that's relaxing. I think the cozy gaming market could really benefit from that. That's my wish, I suppose more so than anything.

Speaker 1: 46:18

I think a lot of people would agree with you on that. I think that we have gotten so far away from cooperative gaming or maybe in-person cooperative gaming. You can do all kinds of things online, but if you want to play with a friend in your home or whatever else, I think there is certainly, at least in my mind, a market for that. I know my wife and my son play Animal Crossing together sometimes, but it's not like a full co-op there's always the leader person and then the secondary person. A lot of games have sort of, I think, shifted that direction in places where they're cooperative. I love that thought. I think gaming can be something that we I think a lot of times like, oh, we need a family activity. It's like, oh, let's play a board game, let's I don't know do a craft together or something like that. I think video games can absolutely be that. I think that's maybe something we're missing. I love that thought. I hope you're right. I hope that is where some of it starts to head.

Speaker 2: 47:20

I think that it's interesting. You're saying that your wife and your son play Animal Crossing. I think that's really cool being able to play that together as well, because I'm on Switch as well you can sit down together and play. That's really nice being able to do more of that, whether it's on Switch, whether it's on various consoles. I think that that would be a real nice way for cosy gaming to go. Again, it's a I would like this to happen. I'm unsure of where the future is going to take cosy gaming. I know that there's a couple of releases that I've got my eye on that could change a few things, which would be really awesome. Why do I see myself as well? I suppose.

Speaker 1: 48:02

Yeah, I was going to say what about you? What does the future look like for Kay? I know you mentioned that you're sort of an opportunist and you love to jump at new things, but do you have thoughts in your mind about where you'd like to head personally and professionally?

Speaker 2: 48:18

So professionally, I definitely wanted to keep in the games industry. I think that I've just got my teeth into it and I've just begun my game production journey. Let's say I really want to find the next opportunity that is going to bring fun through gaming. I don't mind how that is. It's not necessarily. It doesn't have to be a cosy gaming. If I see something that's that really piques my interest, I will attempt to sort of be like getting hold of that pitch and being able to be on the production team would be an honour. So I'm definitely looking at the best opportunities. Seeing where that leads me Obviously still was still alive, but what I want to do is just make sure that I'm looking forwards and personally, I will still keep working. Every now and then in Flores shops. I can't help myself. I pop in and that's it. I think you get droped into something as well, which is really cool.

Speaker 1: 49:17

Oh yeah, those kinds of things get in your blood. I ran a little garden design landscape company for a couple of years and there's still days people will call me and be like, hey, can you help me design this or put this in? I'm like yeah, yes, definitely yes. And then you, like you said, end up in a three week project that you didn't mean to, but it's fun, it's something that means something to you, so it's okay.

Speaker 2: 49:41

Yeah. And then you kind of get that moment halfway through where you're like oh okay, now I know why, I'm not doing this anymore, Like I love it, but at the same time like, yeah, I'm done with this. The thing for me is, by the way, my nails. I'm allowed to get my nails done now, whereas if you look at any Flores nails, especially around in the next few weeks over Valentine's Day they're going to be wrapped, so I'm now enjoying the ability to have pretty nails.

Speaker 1: 50:13

Well, I think we take our wins where we can get them for sure. So just sort of wrapping up. I have so much enjoyed talking to you. This has been a fascinating discussion and I love hearing your thoughts about just business and career, but also just creativity and everything else. You really have some good perspectives on these things. I ask all of my guests, regardless of like who they are or what they've done or what they've studied, like if you could leave our listeners with a piece of advice, and that can be about education, work, floral design, video games, whatever it is, whatever you want. It could be your favorite cookie recipe, I don't care. What would you want our listeners to take home with them, so to speak, from this episode?

Speaker 2: 51:04

Oh, this is a good one. So I'm going to say to just stop and look. Just have a look at what is around you right now, whether that's your in game, whether you're in the field, whether you're on a class, whether you're on a train, whatever it is, just stop and have a look at what's happening around you and observe. That is something that I think we often lose sight of. So just sometimes, to stop, look, listen and just appreciate that, because that's where you start seeing things like opportunities, that's where you start appreciating what you have and being able to sort of live in the moment a little bit that way. So just to stop thinking about future past and just observe. I think that's the advice that I would give. Oh, and always use your local florist.

Speaker 1: 51:51

I think those are both great pieces of advice. I love stop and look. I love just that thought of slowing down for a second in your day to day life, because that is not the direction we're pushed by our societies today, and I think it's really. It's weird that it's sort of a novel, radical idea, but it is in some ways, and I love it so much. And then, yeah, support local florists, local businesses all the time. I think that's great. Yeah. So, kay, as we wrap up, where can people find you? Let us, I mean, are there social media outlets? Are there places we want to direct people? Take the game one more time. Tell us all the important dates.

Speaker 2: 52:34

Yeah, of course, I am going to use this time to plug the game and the game social media systems. So on Discord we are able to be found so you can join in the conversation, ask us questions. Myself I'm on there as well. So if you've got any questions on anything, even if it's floristry related, feel free to head over to the Discord. It's called still alive gaming community. Join us there and join in on the conversations. Obviously, we have the game coming out, so it is on Steam and consoles that will be coming out on the 22nd of February. It is called Garden Life, a cozy simulator. So Instagram handle is Garden Life game, twitter Garden Life game again, and Facebook is just Garden Life. So pre-order right now is available on console. Feel free to wishlist and follow us on Steam. That would be fantastic, and the game will, in the future, be released on Switch as well.

Speaker 1: 53:36

Very cool. I'm excited about all of that and I'm going to go home and pre-order this tonight. Actually, as we record this. I'm very excited. I love this kind of thing and I wanted to tell you one quick little story about this game in general.

Speaker 1: 53:51

Months ago, months and months ago I think, maybe when the first trailer came out or when one of the first announcements about this game came out, a friend of mine sent me a clip or a picture of it, saying like hey, you should look into this. This, I think, will be something you love or that you would enjoy. And I was like, oh, that's so cool. And then when I got an email from your folks a few weeks ago about this, I was like, yes, absolutely yes, like I have to be involved in this in some way. And so even before this conversation about you being on the show and everything started, like that was back in my, in the back of my head somewhere, like, oh, there's like a plant game coming out and I'm so excited about it, so I just wanted to leave, leave you with that. That like I'd seen it before and I've been excited about it for a while. So it's it's cool to get to talk to you and see. Here's some of the background behind it.

Speaker 2: 54:41

Thank you so much. It's been really awesome talking to you as well. I'm looking forward to hearing how you receive the game as well. Your feedback on this is going to be really interesting. So, yeah, definitely excited, exciting times.

Speaker 1: 54:55

Awesome. Okay, thank you so much for your time and for hanging out and just for your passion for what you do. I think it's really great and I can't wait for people to see this game.

Speaker 2: 55:05

Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 55:06

Y'all, wasn't Kay? Wonderful, I thought she was wonderful. And Kay, if you're listening to this or watching this, thanks so much for being part of the show. I so much enjoyed hearing your input and your experience and your thoughts, and you know I've been doing the show for a while and after four years, I think stop and look is one of my favorite pieces of advice. So, whether you are on the bus or in your office or wherever you are, just stop and observe the world around you. There's so much good still out there. There's so much cool stuff still out there in the midst of everything going on in the world. So stop and look. Thanks once again to the Texas Tech Department of Plant and Soil Science for the supporting the show and the Davis College of Texas Tech for supporting the show. Thanks to the PodFix Network for letting me be a part of it. Thanks mostly to you, the listener. You are the reason I do this and keep coming back to do it more.

Speaker 1: 55:54

Once again, garden Life is on sale and available on Xbox and PlayStation I believe PC starting on February 22nd and will be available on Nintendo Switch in March, I believe March 15th, so you can pre-order it now. You can pick it up if it is past that date, and I absolutely think you should, and I cannot wait to play this game. Y'all you know I love you. Keep being kind to one another. If you have not been kind to one another to date, maybe give that a shot. It's a good way to be. Keep being really cool. Plant people and I will talk to you very soon.