Learn English – Better Phrase instead of “Planting a Plant”

I'm writing a thing where I have to describe and write about the video game Plants vs. Zombies. A bit of an explanation about this game: players must plant plants on their front lawn to defend their house from zombie invaders. The game is focused on the strategy of where the plants should be planted to be most effective. So, in this context, the use of the verb to plant really refers to "choosing a location to place a plant in the lawn".

This game fits in the "tower defence" style of games, but is the first of that kind to feature plants. Other games of this category ask the player to build a tower, or defensive structure, in order to repel invaders. In these cases, the gameplay activity can be abstractly described as "the player must build towers in order to repel invaders", as I described above. However, in Plants vs. Zombies, the words build and towers in the previous sentence would both be replaced with the word plant(s), leading to a repetition of the same word twice in a row. This both looks awkward and sounds awkward, and is something I'd like to avoid.

One alternative that I find myself using is the phrase place a plant (or variations thereof, as in the sentence above). This phrase strikes me as clumsy, and it feels and sounds awkward to me.

I have looked at a thesaurus suggested by a user in the comments. I'll list out some potential variations that don't really work for me:

• Bury and cover do not really describe the activity taking place. Nor do implant, pitch, pot, scatter, seed, seed down, set out, start, stock, or transplant. ie. Most of the suggested synonyms.
• Raise is promising, but I dislike it as it implies some effort on the part of the gardener, and in the game the player has to put for no effort whatsoever to plant a plant.
• Finally, grow has the most potential. Like raise, it implies (to me, at least) some effort on the part of the gardener. However, I prefer it to raise just because it sounds like there is less effort involved with grow than with raise. Maybe I'm wrong.