Ok, my wife and I have a big yard (3/4 of an acre), and I’ve been cleaning it up the last month. The yard is going to be pretty open to decoration possibilities, so we’re thinking about what we can do in the spring, and maybe get the prep started soon. We have been talking about setting up decorations, a gazebo, and other possibilities. What occurred to me was if it was possible to make some video game inspired yardwork.
Specifically, I am thinking about cutting down the bushes along the front of the house next year and putting in one bush covered in yellow flowers and shaping it like pac man, and putting a couple more with blue flowers next to it and shaping them like the ghosts from the game. I am trying to figure out how recognizable as the game characters this will be before I do it. Will it just look like oddly colored bushes?
The biggest one though, is I am thinking about creating rectangles in the yard and creating arcade game scenes with colored flowers to represent pixels. I really want to do the 80’s game Galaga. I’m not sure how many enemy ships but a full squadron would be way too many flowers, so maybe 5 or 10. My wife thinks I should put down some black plastic on the “screen” so nothing will grow except the flowers and it will look more like a video game screen.
I willing to work at this and try to do the work necessary, but am not a gardener and don’t know anything about flowers. I’ll need white, red, blue, green flowers, and once flowers start growing taller it will probably mess up the pattern. So I want ones that will stay on the ground. Does anyone have ideas about what flowers to use or any other tips or advice?
I live near Pittsburgh if that makes a difference, although pretty far out into the farmlands.
Funny:
My first thought when I saw the thread title was: PAC MAN!!!
Your problem will be getting passers by to “see” that it is the game.
I’d go with the black plastic (watch out for drainage) with the maze done in some kind of grass or other ground cover (something perennially blue?) and a yellow bush with a “mouth” created by a chunk of heavy black plastic.
The issues will be to get people thinking “Pac Man”; after that, they will be looking at the yard and interpreting things as Pac Man bits.
As long as the ghosts are of the right colors and size, their shape will not be as critical.
To be super-cool: at the bottom of the “screen” but slightly removed: a circular bed of black with a shaft in bright red - the joystick.
You’ll need to keep these displays small enough that the game is obvious to even a distracted passer-by.
So: put the PacMan in one corner. Mario goes next to it.
For dead center: a real pinball machine. You figure out how to do it.
well, remember that Pac-Mn was introduced over a third of a century ago (1980). while it lasted longer than most, video games go out of style pretty fast.
Don’t expect too much recognition except for people over 30.
I thought of PacMan too. Would be fun for little kids if they know what it is.
cough Tetris . It STILL LIVES!!! (mwah hah hah)
I am thinking about trying to grow one character first and see how that works. The biggest question right now is what kind of flowers should I use? Obviously need them to be in a variety of colors, and not grow too fast, or have a way of keeping them close to the ground. Since I’ve never grown things, I could use some advice on the actual flowers.
Pac-Man should be recognizable by most people, but I want to do it as bushes, not the flower maze. The Pac-Man flower maze would have to be huge to fit the details in and the maze would require a ton of flowers and exact precision. I’m going to be working full time while growing this, if I had more people involved I could do a huge Pac-Man flower maze. So I was wondering what bushes that I can shape into circles that have tons of yellow flowers on them.