Animal Crossing Flower Breeding Guide

What are Flowers for in Animal Crossing: New Horizons? Flowers are plants that you can place throughout the Island in order to provide a more aesthetic Appearance, they provide you with items that you can wear and they also attract Insects, as well as improve your island’s rating.

Each flower in the game has different color variations, and some can only by achieved through breeding (also known as cross pollination). In this guide, we’ll discuss about how to achieve this.

How many Flowers are there in the game?

There are 8 types of flowers in the game, and they come with a variety of colors. When you start an island, you’ll find out that there’s 1 type of flower that grows there. Other flowers can then be planted through seeds that you can buy at the shop. You can also go to mystery islands and use your shovel to get more flowers.

Please check our Complete List of Flowers to check all types available.

What are Flower Hybrids?

For each type of flower, there are normal colors that you can get which usually get that are growing. Flower Hybrids let you have different color variations of a flower, by cross pollinating flowers of specific color combinations.

A hybrid occurs if you water your flowers with a Watering Can, and if a specific combination of colors is near together. If you water each day, a new flower can appear near them that provides you with a new color.

How do you Breed Flowers?

In order to start this process, you’ll have some preparations in place. You can follow our steps below in order to start breeding flowers for different color combinations:

Prepare your Seeds or Flowers

Each day, Nook’s Cranny provides you with different seeds, make sure to get different colors of the same type. For example, we’ll be purchasing Red Cosmos and White Cosmos seeds.

You can also get flowers using your Shovel and keep them in your inventory. Visiting mystery Islands using Nook Miles can let you find different flower types. For example, we’ll be getting Red Cosmos and White Cosmos flowers from the Island.

Prepare your land

You’ll need some space in order for you to grow your seeds or flowers, so make sure you have a nice spot for planting them. You need to water them each day, so it’s good to know a location that’s easily accessible. You can use a fence in order to contain any flowers that can spread too much.

Plant your seeds or flowers and water them

You need to plant the seeds and flowers and make sure there is space around them in order for a new flower to grow. In our example, we have planted red and white cosmos seeds as well as a red and white cosmos flower with some room to grow. The basic rule is you’ll need 2 flowers together in order for a new one to grow.

New flowers will not grow if there is no space around them. You will then have to water them with your Watering Can. If it’s a rainy day, they will be watered for you.

Water them each day and wait until new flowers grow

Seeds take time to grow and you’ll have to tend to them each day by watering them. Once they turn to a flower, you’ll still need to water them each day. Seeds and Flowers that have been watered will shine so you’ll know that you’re done watering for the day.

You’ll notice that a new flower will grow if another one spawns beside next to them. If a new flower comes out, make sure that you water those as well. Keep watering each day, until you’ll get a new flower color. Not all new flowers will grow at the same time so be patient. In our example, Red and White Cosmos have been bred to create Pink Cosmos.

What other Flower colors are available?

The flower colors that you can create through breeding vary per type of flower. We have compiled a list of flowers as well as their colors on the following page:

Complete list of Flowers

Our list provides the basic color combinations that you can do in order to get more hybrids. We hope that this guide helps you in collecting all of them.