Garden

A garden with Piñata, such as a Juicygoose, a Goobaa, and a sour Macaracoon.

A garden is a place where plants, piñatas, and people live together. The Viva Piñata series revolves around gardens.

New gardens

In the original Viva Piñata game the garden that players will play in is a paradise that has fallen into ruins and was originally owned by Jardiniero. When a player starts a new game, Leafos is crying about her ruined garden. Your job as a level 1 gardener, is to restore it to its glory in whatever way you want, setting the stage for the garden to grow to incorporate all kinds of piñata. The garden starts out as a dirty brown landscape, and you have to go about transforming it from a very basic level. Leafos will give away basic tools needed to manage a garden, such as the shovel, the watering can, and a grass seed packet. She also gives a Journal to help recall what what was done already. As that brown patch turns into a garden, piñatas will be attracted who will help develop the land and, in turn, attract other piñatas. Running a piñata garden may seem like a big task, but there is always help in the form of villagers. Leafos gives advice if asked, but she isn't always here to chat.

Buildings

Willy Builder can be hired to build buildings so the piñatas can each have their own species-specific Housings in which they live and also be able to perform their Romance dance. Eventually he can build other buildings that serve other purposes, such as a house for working Helpers and eventually a Mine.

Plants

Of course, being a garden, plants can be grown in it, and plants can attract new kinds of piñata to a garden. Just make sure you use your watering can to water the plants or they will die. Lottie has a store where you can purchase all kinds of seeds for your garden. Seedos occasionally enters your garden and if you talk to him, he will throw a seed into your garden.

Piñata

If you work hard, your garden will flourish with many different kinds of piñata. Soon you'll get awards which show how much you've improved as a gardener, which prompts nearby villagers such as Lottie to allow you a bigger catalog of items to use, buy, and plant, and new faces such as Gretchen Fetchem will appear in the village and set up shop too, giving you new functions you can do. Arfur Stout will set up his Inn so Helpers are always here to lend you a hand in helping your garden. Gretchen Fetchem will set up a shop where she can hunt piñatas you've already obtained. Fanny Franker will operate a Post Office where you can crate belongings to another person, or yourself to store items. An old man called Ivor will enter in your garden and ask for some chocolate coins, and if you help him he will pay his debts to you. Also, Jardiniero will give upgrades to the shovel which allows it to do more things, allowing for even more plants and piñata to be in the garden, and even allow to use more of the garden's space.

Dangers

Once you reach a certain point, some bad things can occur in your garden. Sour piñatas will appear in your garden and become pests by doing harmful things to your garden. There is a way to deal with these sours, by taming them you will return them to their natural state and gain access to their unique abilities to do good for your garden. Once tamed, you also get a Tower of Sour block so that they can no longer mess up your garden unless you want them to. You will also have to put potentially harmful plants called weeds in your garden to help get some species to enter your garden, become residents, or even romance. If you don't watch the weeds and sours carefully, your piñatas can get sick and eventually attract Dastardos to come and reap them for you, making you lose them forever. After reaching a high enough level, Professor Pester will discover your garden, and send Ruffians who cannot be tamed and will wreak havoc on your garden. Soon, he himself will also get in your garden and take measures to ruin it by destroying your most valuable piñata with the swing of a bat. Also, fights can occur with incompatible piñata species, and some bad piñatas can also start fights by themselves. These fights will cause one piñata to get injured and thus eventually attract Dastardos in your garden.

Eventually, legendary piñata, such as the Dragonache (which even Jardiniero couldn't get in his garden) will be attracted to your garden. Also, you will learn of what happened to him and how he and his garden got this way in the storybook of the journal.

A garden can be viewed from a top down angle.

Garden Size

In the Viva Piñata games the area that can be built in is marked by a white border around the garden. The area allotted is small at first, but increases by reaching certain level thresholds.

The first garden size upgrade is at level 11, and at level 21 the second and final garden size upgrade is received. In the first Viva Piñata game you can go outside the garden boundaries and preview your maximum region until you get the second upgrade, which is also when the border marking your allowed space suddenly disappears. In Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise the border appears regardless of what upgrades unlocked and the cursor can go outside the region to view piñatas slightly outside the garden, and use items such as the Tower of Sour, which unlike the first game cannot be accessed from the menu. In Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise you get the first garden size upgrade midway through level 4, and the second upgrade early on in level 5. The white border appears all the time regardless of the upgrades you have. The size upgrades will affect the percentage counted for requirements, however, so if you have just over 40% water in your garden, when your garden space is increased by an upgrade it can drop below 40% causing the requirements to no longer be met unless you add more water to your garden.

Garden Space

Regardless of the size of the garden, there is a fixed limit on the amount of items in a garden. Only 32 piñatas can be in a garden at once, and this limit also includes non-resident piñata. Also, only around 36 fence posts and walls can be placed. Up to 15 light decorations can be placed in a garden.

Having multiple gardens

Main article: Saved game

In Viva Piñata and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, a player can have as many gardens as can be stored on a storage device. Additionally, player stats such as Gardener level, . However, in Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise you can only have up to three gardens, and each garden acts as an entirely separate profile, with different gardener levels, coin counts, and the post office must be unlocked for each profile seperately. If you hit Seedos and he throws seeds in your garden, in the other gardens he will still like you. The only thing is that every time you have to whack all the hard soil and it takes a long time if you have all the garden space you can get. Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise has no hard soil whatsoever.

Gallery

A garden with a Pretztail, a Fudgehog, a Juicygoose, a Horstachio, a Sparrowmint, a Cocoadile, a Moozipan, and two Goobaas.

A garden with lots of Poison Ivy plants.

An image of a garden with the icon depicting the Choclodocus.