Gardeners are responsible for the lay out, maintenance, and care for a section of ground dedicated towards the cultivation of plants. Some might be farmers responsible for feeding a kingdom, while others may spend hours in the king's garden, fussing over a single sick plant.
Gardener's tools include shears, a hoe, a rake, a spade, a watering can, and an assortment of wild seeds. Gardener's tools weigh 20 lbs and costs 10 gp.
Gardening can cover a wide range of actions, land needs, and focuses. Some gardeners are wholly dedicated to cultivating roses in a king's garden, while others are farmers attempting to grow crop, and others could be arborists maintaining a forest. While they may have separate goals, they are still cultivating plants in a section of ground. Thanks to this common knowledge, they gain the following abilities.
When moving through non-magical difficult terrain, you reduce the extra movement costs by 5 feet. This means if you were traveling through shrubs that cost an extra 10 feet for every 5 feet you move through them, normally 15 feet to move past it, it would only require 10 feet. In addition, you have resistance to any damage nonmagical plants might inflict from their thorns, spines, or similar hazards.
A gardener can spend 1 hour exploring the local terrain and find enough food to feed a number of creatures equal to their proficiency bonus, no check required. If the gardener is in sparse terrain, like a desert or tundra, they must spend 1d4 hours to find the same amount of food.
If you spend a season working the land, you can increase the yield of the land by 5% times your Proficiency Bonus. This means that if a field a farmer was tending would ordinarily produce 100 gp worth of crops after a season, you can increase its worth to 110 gp if you have +2 Proficiency Bonus (10%) or increase to 130 gp if you have a +6 Proficiency Bonus (30%). If you aren't working on a farm, but rather a garden, forest, swamp, or other area; the yield might have to do with how many flowers you are able to plant, how well the trees are tended to, or any other measure. Typically, a season is 3 months of time.
While you are in nature, when you make a Medicine check to help a hurt creature, you gain advantage on the check. If your proficiency with Nature is higher, you can instead use your Nature skill when making the check.
When you attack a magical or nonmagical plant with a weapon, once per turn you can deal additional damage to it equal to half your Proficiency Bonus (no action required).
Some gardeners are able to tap into the magic of their craft, summoning plant spirits or causing the natural world to listen to them. Not everyone uses their power for good, as many evil druids are more than happy to unleash evil plants on civilization.
To summon forth a plant spirit, sometimes referred to as a leshy, the gardener must follow the following steps.
Every gardener that has learned the art of magical gardening automatically knows how to summon a minor plant spirit to create an awakened shrub. As they go on their adventures, they might find others that are willing to share knowledge on how to summon other plant spirits. A plant spirit sees their creator as a close friend, though if they are attacked or mistreated, will wander off on their own. A gardener can only have a number of created plant spirits under their power equal to half their Proficiency Bonus. If the gardener exceeds this number, the new plant spirit fails to manifest.
Each plant spirit to be summoned has requisite materials needed for it be drawn out and bound into a physical body. Most spirits don't require expensive or rare components, though a few unique spirits will only allow themselves to be bound if they are offered unique materials. A gardener can pay the gold cost listed alongside each plant, or they can spend time hunting for the goods. It takes a gardener a number of hours equal to 1d4 times the plant's Challenge Rating (minimum 1). Most biomes will have a variety of materials that a gardener can use, though some, like a desert, might have few such goods. In this case, it takes longer to find the appropriate supplies, requiring a number of hours equal to 1d6 times the plant's Challenge Rating.
Each ritual takes a certain amount of time to complete, or has a set of circumstances that must be accomplished before the ritual can succeed. This time can be halved if multiple people, who are both proficient with Gardener's Tools and knows the ritual, are taking part in summoning a plant spirit. In this case, there is one creature who is in charge of the ritual.
At the end of every ritual, a check must be made with the DC dependent on how powerful the plant spirit is that is being summoned. On a success, the ritual is a success and the plant spirit is bound to the materials. On a failed check, the attempt is wasted and the required materials are destroyed. The check is based on your Wisdom (Gardener's Tools), adding your Proficiency Bonus if you are proficient.
The following are examples of some of the plant spirits that can be summoned. A character just starting out only knows the ritual for summoning an awakened shrub.