Flowers in Animal Crossing New Horizons come in a variety of different breeds that have different looks, and each of those breeds also have a range of initial colors. There’s even more customization than this, however - you can actually create hybrid flowers through cross pollination, where you encourage flowers to grow in such a way that they pop with new, exclusive ‘hybrid’ colors. These hyrbid colors vary from flower to flower.
How to get and plant Flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
There’ll be some flowers planted on the island when you first arrive, but you won’t be able to reach them until you can craft a ladder. You can pick the actual flowers themselves to sell and craft with, and flowers can also be destroyed if you run over them - but so long as you don’t dig up the base and the roots, they’ll grow back after a couple of days. You can move planted flowers by digging them out with your shovel then planting them somewhere else. Beyond the initial flowers already out in the on your island when you arrive, you can also buy extra flowers from Timmy in Residential Services and later in the Nook’s Cranny shop once it’s built. On any given day the shop will always have six different types of flower in stock in unlimited quantities - usually three styles of flower in two colors each. It costs 240 Bells to buy one flower to plant, or you can get a bundle of five flowers for 1200 bells - which isn’t a saving, but saves you from buying flowers five times. Once the shop moves into Nook’s Cranny, the flowers are stored in the cabinet in the back. Once you have your flowers, you can plant them out in the island from your inventory. You can move them, as we said, by digging them up. Flowers improve your island’s image, which later in the game will help to raise your star rating, alongside things like decoration and removing weeds.
Animal Crossing New Horizons Flower Breeds and Hybrid Flowers
As mentioned, Animal Crossing New Horizons features a few different breeds of flower - eight in total. Each of those eight breeds can come in a small handful of colors, and if you plan it right, you can crossbreed with those colors to create new colors. To understand how it works, first take a look at this screenshot:
Notice the flower buds - how they’re in a ‘W’ pattern? This is key to the hybrid process. What you need to do is plant the parent flowers in this shape - it can be up to a five-by-five grid of in-game squares (a square being the space a flower takes up) - no more. You can fence it in if that makes life easier, and that also stops hybridization clashes between different types of flowers if you’re trying multiple batches at once. So it should go flower, space, flower, space, flower - and then the same, but alternating, on the next row below. Simple. As we say, a maximum of five across and five down. Once your flowers are planted like this, you simply have to water them every single day. This is a key part of the process: and if you do it right, hybrid flowers with unique colors will sprout and blossom in the blank spaces left behind. After the flowers are healthy, you can dig them out and transplant them to anywhere else on your island with a shovel. Which color flower hybrid you get will depend on the flowers used in the pattern. So let’s talk about that:
Hybrid Flower Colors: how to get each color
As we say above, which flower color appears in the empty spaces on your hybrid flower planting will depend on the flowers used. So long as you’re watering daily and got the layout right, hybrids will appear - but which is all about the recipe, which varies from flower to flower. Here’s a list of the hybrid flower colors we’ve found so far, and the colors needed to achieve them. The price data was reported by the official Animal Crossing Companion, which you can pick up here. Cosmos Hybrid Flower Colors:
Black = Red & Red Orange = Red & Yellow Pink = Red & White
Hyacinths:
Blue = White & White Orange = Red & Yellow Pink = Red & White Purple = Blue & Blue
Lilies:
Black = Red & Red Orange = Red & Yellow Pink = Red & White
Mums:
Green = Purple & Purple Pink = White & Red Purple = White & White
Pansies:
Blue = White & White Orange = Red & Yellow Purple = Blue & Blue
Tulips:
Black = Red & Red Orange = Red & Yellow Pink = Red & White Purple = Black & Black
Roses
Black = Red & Red Orange = Red & Yellow Pink = Red & White Purple = White & White Hybrid Red = Purple & Orange Blue = Hybrid Red & Hybrid Red Gold = Water a Black Rose with a Golden Watering Can
Windflowers
Blue = White & White Punk = Orange & Red Purple = Blue & Blue
For more on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, check out our full guide.
