The Hope Garden is live and growing. My latest creation is a virtual community garden that allows you to plant a custom made flower and attach a message for a loved one, then pass an e-card message on that links back directly to your flower. Users can navigate the 3D garden and browse other inspirational messages with the option to “water” flowers that touched them.

The most challenging part technically was finding the best suitable number of flowers on the screen at once and controlling how the flowers moved while maintaining a smooth tween. Then keeping it smooth on processors that were built longer than 3 year ago, and of course those slow as heck Mac processors (before they switched to Intel) accompanied by a slow Flash Player for the Mac. As you may notice, when navigating the garden by click, the flowers go into a wire frame state and the Stage goes into low quality mode.

The Garden is geared towards those who are suffering from cancer or know someone who is suffering. The idea is to help promote Hyperthermia Treatment for recurrent cancer victims. BSD Medical is an amazing client with a technology that is making waves in cancer treatment.

Go plant a flower (or 10) and share with the ones you love. Though the site lends to those with cancer – I feel the site suits planting a flower for anyone you love or care about.

Also, make sure to navigate the garden using your scroll wheel (on a Mac use arrow keys).