Magical Adventures
Inspired by Real Foods
The Story Behind the Story
See How a Harvest Grove Story Grows
Follow along from the first spark of an idea through the research, character design, wrong turns, changes, and discoveries that eventually become a Harvest Grove adventure.
Behind the Story
Have you ever wondered what happens before a Harvest Grove story becomes a finished book?
This is where you get to peek behind the scenes.
Behind the Garden Gate, we’ll share how an idea grows into an adventure-from the first spark of a new character to the research, brainstorming, artwork, wrong turns, discarded ideas, and little discoveries that eventually bring a Harvest Grove story to life.
Some ideas work. Some change completely. And some end up in the compost pile.
Here, you get to see it all happen.
The Magic Behind Harvest Grove
At the heart of every Harvest Grove story is something real.
Fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices contain natural plant compounds called phytonutrients. These compounds can help give plants their colors and play other important roles in the plant.
In Harvest Grove, we take that real science and imagine a magical backstory for it.
Each fairy represents a real phytonutrient and is connected to a food where that phytonutrient can actually be found. Then we ask a very Harvest Grove kind of question:
What if that food didn’t always have its special phytonutrient gift? How might it have gotten it?
That’s where our stories begin.
Our fairies set off on adventures, solve strange problems, make discoveries, and ultimately share their special gifts. Those gifts become part of the fruits, vegetables, herbs, or spices where those same phytonutrients are found today.
Of course, fairies didn’t really give apples quercetin or tomatoes lycopene. That part is our mythology. But the foods and the phytonutrients that inspired the stories are very real.
Real plants. Real phytonutrients. Magical stories about how they came together.
How a Harvest Grove Story Begins
A Harvest Grove story usually begins with two things: a real phytonutrient and a real plant that contains it.
From there, we start digging.
We learn about the plant itself-how and where it grows, what makes it unusual, and what happens in its garden or orchard. We also research the phytonutrient: where it’s found, what scientists know about it, and what makes it interesting enough to inspire a fairy’s special gift.
Then comes the fun part.
We start asking “What if?”
What if something went strangely wrong in the garden? What if the plants needed something they didn’t have yet? What if an animal caused a problem-or stumbled across an important clue? And how could our fairy’s gift become part of the solution?
Sometimes the pieces fall together quickly.
Other times, we follow an idea for a while before discovering that it doesn’t work at all.
We research. We brainstorm. We question things. We change our minds. We try again.
And little by little, real science becomes the starting point for a brand-new Harvest Grove adventure.
Now, Meet Quinn
Rather than simply telling you how a Harvest Grove story is created, we thought it would be much more fun to show you while it’s happening.
So we’re opening the garden gate and inviting you to follow along as our next fairy’s adventure takes shape.
Meet Quinn Quercetin, our apple fairy.
Quinn’s story isn’t finished. There’s no polished book waiting behind the scenes. What you’re about to see is the story of Quinn’s adventure as we’re creating it.
So this time, you don’t have to wait until the adventure is finished.
You get to watch it grow.
Currently Growing: Quinn Quercetin
Where Quinn Began
Quinn Quercetin didn't begin with a story.
She began with a name, a phytonutrient, and an apple.
Quinn was one of the early fairy characters imagined for Harvest Grove. We knew she would represent quercetin, a naturally occurring plant compound found in apples and many other foods (like onions).
We also knew that allergies would somehow be part of her world.
That gave us the beginnings of a character-but not an adventure.
What would happen to Quinn?
What problem would she have to solve?
How could pollen and allergies become part of a children's fantasy without turning the story into a science lesson?
And perhaps the hardest question:
How could the real science inspire Quinn's magical gift without asking it to do something the science doesn't actually support?
Those questions would eventually send Quinn's story in more directions than we ever expected.
Some ideas lasted for days.
Some lasted for minutes.
And a few probably should have gone into the compost pile even faster than they did. 😂
But that's exactly why we chose Quinn's story to document.
You're not seeing a finished adventure with all the messy parts removed.
You're watching one grow.
Finding Quinn
Knowing who a character is and knowing what she looks like are two very different things.
We don't have Quinn's very first design from when she was originally imagined, but we do have one of her early improved designs.
That Quinn wore a cape, with her hair styled close to her head in a way that looked almost braided and wrapped around it.
Then, when we began preparing to create Quinn's story, we looked at her again.
We gave her a new look with capri pants and shoulder-length hair.
For a while, we thought we had our new Quinn.
Then we remembered something important.
Apples meant autumn.
And our apple fairy didn't exactly look ready for a chilly fall day.
So Quinn went back to the drawing board.
We experimented with jackets, capes and hoods. We tried different hairstyles. And we adjusted her colors again and again.
Because Quinn represents quercetin, we wanted her palette to feel connected to her identity without simply dressing her like an apple.
Soft yellows and gentle greens began to feel much more like Quinn.
Some outfits looked too heavy.
Some greens were too dark.
Some versions were close-but still weren't quite her.
And eventually, after all that experimenting, we found ourselves going back to Quinn's earlier cape.
It had been right for her all along.
But there was still something we wanted to change.
Her hair.
Instead of returning to the old wrapped hairstyle, we kept the shoulder-length idea from her newer design and gave her hair a soft, crimped-curly texture.
So the Quinn we have today is actually a combination of different versions of her-her earlier cape, her newer shoulder-length hair, the soft yellow-and-green palette that felt right for quercetin, and a few changes we discovered along the way.
Her design didn't develop in a straight line.
We moved forward, went backward, tried completely different ideas, and eventually brought our favorite pieces together.
And just like her story, Quinn herself grew through a lot of trying, changing, and trying again.
When the Science Started Asking Questions
We knew allergies belonged somewhere in Quinn's story.
Quercetin has been studied for its effects on processes involved in the body's allergic response, so pollen seemed like a natural place to begin.
And an apple orchard gave us plenty of pollen.
Perfect, right?
Not quite.
The more we looked at the science, the more questions appeared.
Apple trees need pollen to produce fruit. We couldn't simply make pollen the villain and have Quinn get rid of it.
We also didn't want the story to suggest that eating an apple would magically stop someone's allergies.
And Quinn's gift needed to make sense both in the fantasy of Harvest Grove and in the real science that inspired her.
Suddenly, what had seemed like an obvious story connection-
Quercetin → allergies → pollen → apple fairy
-wasn't a story at all.
It was a puzzle.
So we started asking a different question:
What if pollen wasn't the problem?
Pollen was doing exactly what it was supposed to do in the garden. The problem was that some of the animals were sneezing, itching, and having a miserable time around it.
That gave us a new possibility: Quinn didn't necessarily have to stop the pollen. Maybe her role was to help the animals handle being around it.
Now we had a direction.
We still didn't have a plot.
Into the Compost Pile 😂
Once we understood that the pollen needed to stay, we started looking for a story problem.
And the ideas started flying.
What if the garden became completely overwhelmed with pollen?
We pictured yellow pollen everywhere, with the animals sneezing and itching as they tried to go about their day.
Then came the solutions.
Maybe the animals could dance and stomp around to move the pollen.
That mostly sounded like a good way to send even MORE pollen flying through the air.
Into the compost pile.
Maybe everyone could splash water around to wash the pollen away.
Now we had wet animals, muddy ground, and another solution that created a completely different problem.
Into the compost pile.
Then came one of our stranger ideas:
What if someone removed all the apples because they thought that would stop the pollen?
There was just one problem.
Removing the apples wouldn't stop the apple trees from producing pollen when they flowered again.
Could a character in the story believe it would work? Absolutely.
Did that mean it belonged in Quinn's story?
We weren't convinced.
Into the compost pile it went.
None of these ideas became the answer.
But each failed idea helped us understand something important about the story we were trying to create:
Quinn shouldn't be fighting pollen.
The pollen belongs in the garden.
Our challenge was finding a way for Quinn, the animals, the apple trees, and all that pollen to belong in the same adventure.
To Be Continued…
And that’s where Quinn is right now.
She has her name.
She has her apple trees.
She has her quercetin gift.
She has plenty of pollen.
She even has a growing pile of rejected ideas.
What she doesn’t have yet is the adventure that brings all of those pieces together.
And that’s the fun of sharing this story while we’re actually creating it.
We don’t know yet which idea will finally click.
We don’t know what Quinn will try, what will go wrong, or which new idea might send us in a completely different direction tomorrow.
But when we figure it out, you’ll see it here.
Come back to Behind the Garden Gate and watch Quinn’s adventure continue to grow.
To be continued…
