How to Breed Flowers in Animal Crossing

Flowers are a great way to decorate your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. They’re attractive, affordable, and easy to grow. If you want to customize the look of your island, though, you’ll need to breed flowers in unique colors. Here’s how to do it.

The Basics of Flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

It’s essential to understand the basics of flowers before diving breeding them. The nuance of how flowers grow can trip you up at first.

Every island starts with a native flower that grows from the very first day. The flower is one of the game’s eight “common” flowers: Cosmos, Hyacinths, Lilies, Mums, Pansies, Roses, Tulips, and Windflowers.

You can acquire other common flowers by purchasing them from the store. Your options will expand as you upgrade the store from the Resident Services Tent to the final, expanded Nook’s Cranny. Here’s what you can expect from each upgrade.

• Resident Services Tent: Three types of seed, three types of flower, one color each
• Nook’s Cranny: Six types of seed, three types of flower, two colors each
• Nook’s Cranny (Expanded): Nine types of seeds, three types of flower, three colors each

Flowers may also be gifted to you as presents, sold at particular vendors (such as Leif), or appear in the wild on Mystery Islands.

The most reliable alternative way to expand your flower selection is to visit islands owned by other players. Each island’s store will offer something different on any given day. If your friends don’t play Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you can turn to community sources, like Turnip Exchange or Reddit, to find players providing access to their island.

How to Grow and Move Flowers

You can acquire flowers in four states: seed, stem, flower, and plucked.

Plucked flowers are obtained by walking up to a plant and pressing the Y button on your controller. Doing this removes the flower from the plant for use in crafting but leaves the plant behind. You can’t use plucked flowers to grow new flowers.

You can purchase seeds from stores and plant them on any open ground. Seeds don’t need care and will grow into a full-sized, blooming flower after four days.

Flowers are fully developed plants that have bloomed. Flowers will only breed once they’ve grown. A grown flower can be moved and planted in a new location by digging it up with a shovel. You can purchase grown flowers or dig up flowers on Mystery Islands and move them to your island.

Stems are fully developed flowers that you’ve plucked and haven’t yet regrown their blooms. You can dig them up and transplant them just as you can a blooming flower plant. Stems will develop new blooms after a few days.

These states' differences can be confusing, but they’re important to remember because only fully grown flowers will breed.

How to Crossbreed Flowers (For Unique Colors!)

Crossbreeding creates new colors of a given type of flower. You’ll want to plant only flowers of a single variety if your goal is to crossbreed them for new colors.

1. Obtain multiple colors of the flower type you want to crossbreed, either by purchasing them or re-planting them from other locations.

2. Plant the flowers in a space that is entirely clear of obstructions on all sides. Simple rows are practical, attractive, and easy to organize.  

3. Return to your flower bed and water every day. While watering is not a necessity, it will significantly increase the rate at which new flowers grow.

   New flowers only grow in empty spaces adjacent to a fully grown flower. Ensure you have space nearby.

4. Dig up and re-plant new flowers as they grow to ensure your original flowers have the space for further growth. 

Flower colors generally appear in patterns you might expect. For example, placing a red and yellow flower side-by-side will often result in an orange flower while planting red and white flowers near each other will often result in a pink flower.

However, color variations are limited based on type, as shown in the table below. Some flowers, like Roses, have many possible colors. Others, like Cosmos and Mums, are limited to just a few.

Advanced Crossbreeding Tips

Plantings in rows with plenty of free space nearby works well enough for most purposes. You’ll breed a wide variety of colors that you can move to other parts of your island. That, in turn, will produce even more variety.

However, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a highly complex flower genealogy system. We recommend three fan guides if you want to understand them fully. From least to most complex: The ACNH Hybrid Guide infographic by Peach-n-Key, the ACNH Flower Genetics Guide by Paleh, and the Optimized ACNH Hybrid Recipes by Backwardsn.

These guides are more than most players need, but you’ll have to read up if you want to precisely target a specific color or wish to crossbreed flowers as fast as possible.

Breed Flowers More Quickly by Inviting Friends

Whatever method of crossbreeding you choose, you’ll see results quicker with help from visitors to your island.

Flowers breed at a higher rate when watered by visitors. Datamining shows having just one visitor water your flowers a day more than doubles the chance they’ll reproduce the next day. The bonus increases up to five visitors, which increases the chance flowers will multiply by more than five times.  

How to Get Gold Roses

Gold Roses are a rare color of rose that appear under specific circumstances.

First, they breed only from black roses. Second, the player must water the black roses with a Golden Watering Can. The DIY Recipe for the Golden Watering Can is unlocked and provided to you after your island hits a 5-star rating.

How to Get Lily of the Valley

Lily of the Valley is a rare flower that will only appear once your island receives a 5-star rating. It has a chance of occurring every day your island keeps a 5-star rating.

The Lily of the Valley doesn’t reproduce, and only appears in white, so crossbreeding is impossible. You can only obtain more by maintaining a 5-star rating and waiting for the flower to appear randomly.