Flower Guide - Hybrid Flowers, Flower Crossbreeding List - Animal Crossing: New Horizons Guide - IGN (2024)

When first starting off on your island, there will only be a few ways to obtain flowers. Each island has its own native flower that grows naturally on the cliffs and higher elevations of your island - which you cannot reach until you get a ladder recipe from Tom Nook while helping to furnish homes for incoming villagers.

You can transplant these flowers to other parts of the island by using a shovel (picking them up without a shovel will take the bulb to use in accessories or crafting - but leave the actual flower behind).

Beyond this, you can also buy flower seeds in basic colors (red, white, and yellow/orange) from Timmy and Tommy - but the types will vary between three types per island, and the selection will be based on how far along you’ve come in building and upgrading their shop - Nook’s Cranny:

• Timmy at the Resident Services Tent: 3 Different Seeds, 3 Kinds of Flowers - 1 Color Type Each
• Nook’s Cranny Shop: 6 Different Seeds, 3 Kinds of Flowers - 2 Color Types of Each
• Nook’s Cranny (Upgraded) Shop: 9 Different Seeds, 3 Kinds of Flowers - 3 Color Types of Each

Seeds can be planted almost anywhere on your island without needing a shovel, and will grow on their own with or without water in a few days.

You can also find flowers growing on Mystery Islands that you can visit using Nook Miles Tickets, though they are usually only growing the types of flowers that are sold on your island. However, sometimes you may randomly find a special Mystery Island boasting rare colors or flowers that are hard to find elsewhere.

The best way to get other types of flowers is by making friends, and checking in with them to see what types of seeds are sold in their towns. It’s the most reliable way to get the types you're missing, so check in with them often!

Once flowers are grown, you can continue to grow more by watering them each day with a Watering Can (or letting rain or another helpful villager do the job for you). Check back each day and you may see another flower sprout up on any side of the initial flower. The new flower will always be the same color of the watered flower’s initial seed - but there is a way to combine different colors of one type of flower to create new colors.

While each flower type’s seeds are sold in three variants, it is possible to plant different colors of the same flower species and water them to create hybrid colors - thus growing flowers that cannot be obtained otherwise. Before we get into specifics - check out the quick list of flower types below:

When a flower is watered (aka the parent), it can breed a new flower in any square around it in a 3x3 grid. However, if another flower (aka the partner) is placed nearby, they can cross-pollinate to form a new flower around either the parent or partner flower.

In previous Animal Crossing games, the partner flower needed to be placed in the 3x3 grid around the parent flower, but with testing it now seems that a partner flower can cross-pollinate with the parent flower in a 5x5 grid, which is a much larger area. Because of this, you may find that planting several flowers near each other may not always give the results you want - so you may want to only use specific colors in a 5x5 grid if looking for a specific flower color.

Since a new flower can only spawn from the sides of the parent or partner, you’ll want to give them a lot of space - and you can do so by planting flowers either directly next to each other in lines, or in diagonal spaces in a grid. Note that there are other ways you can plant flowers if you're looking to further optimize your flower breeding, but for basic purposes a diagonal layout works fine - just make sure to always have spaces around your flower groups where possible.

We prefer using a diagonal grid, as it gives each flower 4 spots for a new flower to spawn. We also recommend using fencing to designate your flower grids so you don’t get confused on placing them - just know that flowers cannot spawn where other items like fencing or trees have been placed, so this will limit places flowers can breed but at least your town will look nice!

Once you have laid out your grid pattern (you can do this in any fashion you want - from just a 2x2 grid, to a 3x3, or 5x5 and beyond), be sure to water the plants each day. There’s no set guarantee on when they may spawn - it may take a day, or it may take a week! Each color type also seems to have a certain percent chance to appear, so it’s possible you may not get the flower color you’re hoping for. If this is the case, just dig out the new flower, and keep watering for more chances.

According to new data tested by Animal Crossing users Aeter, BackwardsN, Ninji, and Paleh - it has been discovered that watering your flowers only gives you a base chance of 5% to breed new flowers on a given day. However, if other players visit your town and water these flowers, it will increase the production rate up to a total of 80% chance, and you will see this indicated by your watered flowers going from small blue and silver sparkles to larger yellow and gold flashes.

See the chart below for more info on how extra visitors can increase your flower production - which can be crucial in breeding more hybrid flowers at a faster rate: