How do I create Plants in 3.5e?

Question

Our campaign is plodding along steadily and we are approaching the various character made Demiplane levels of play. These demiplanes are full of non living materials, but this question can be applied to any place where there is no vegetation.

So how does a character of whatever class create permanent, living plants? The druid spell plant growth does not work on barren ground - it requires existing plants to modify. From create object spells, and minor/major creation, we were only able to infer the components were organic material, like a wooden box or hemp rope, but saw no indication anything was actually living.

Dark Sun used to have several foliage/garden spells, for example: Tree Growth, Create Oasis, Prolific Vegetation, Prolific Forestation, Hasten Crops, and many related weather/climate spells.

Is the creation of a plant, such as grass, a rose bush, or an oak tree, something that demands Epic level spells? And which seed(s) would you use if that's the case?

Answer 1

If you do not need a magic/spell based solution then I would continue reading my answer below.
If however you want a specific spell then I would welcome others to provide solutions :)

Non-magic based answer
I think perhaps the simplest answer would be to carry a small bag of seeds/organic materials that can then be "planted" and used a a source material for the druid spells you have already mentioned.

For example, if the character(s) were to collect a patch of moss and a handful of soil to go with it (easy to keep alive and transport). Then, upon reaching the barren destination, dump the soil/moss mixture onto the ground thereby changing it from "barren" to "not barren".

There may be other, magic-based, ways of doing this but I tend to prefer solutions of least effort :)

Answer 2

The 3rd party, Green Ronin publishing, Egyptian Adventures Hamunaptra has a spell called Root which allows a plant to grow in ANY kind of soil. It also has the Dunewalker Prestige Class which has a capstone called Oasis Seed which literally causes an Oasis, plants and all, to form and grow.

Technically it's a bit of a gray area but the Fabricate spells wording would allow you to transform an object of plant material (like hemp rope or a cotton shirt) into a plant. Your DM might throw a book at you for splitting hairs in such a way but that's neither here nor there.

You could even find a nice mineral vein and then cast Transmute Metal to Wood to start you off. Also Transmute Metal to Wood doesn't specify the state of the wood so if it was "green" wood it would thus be fresh and possibly considered still living and thus affect able by Plant Growth. More hair splitting I'll grant you but still.

Of course it goes without saying, Limited Wish, Wish, & Miracle are always options.

You could also use Tree Shape to turn into a tree then drop nuts/fruits/seeds onto the ground I suppose. Polymorph might be able to allow this as well.

Or use Summon spells to summon plant creatures and maybe, if your DM is generous, they could be ordered to drop seeds.

Honestly, Plant Growth should probably be able to affect seeds, nuts, & fruit so if you have trail rations you've got nuts.

If I remember correctly, there are rules for researching your own new spells in one of the books.

You could cast Create Food and Water, then take any fruit or nuts from it and cast Plant Growth on them before the 24 hours are up. After that, it wouldn't be the food created by the spell anymore so it would probably last. If not, it should still drop more fruit/nuts which should definitely not be affected by the time limit.

You could also buy some Quaals Feather Token: Tree items.