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Flowers can be planted around your town to make it look pretty and also attract insects. The six main types of flower are cosmos, lilies, pansies, roses, tulips and violets.

Carnations can only be obtained on mother’s day (10th May) and father’s day (21st June) in letters from your parents. Dandelions will appear in your town randomly, as will clovers.

Clovers can be pulled out like weeds and there is a chance of finding a four-leaved clover which brings good luck. The clover can be worn or placed as furniture in your house. If your town has a perfect status, the Jacob’s Ladder will grow in town.

Watering your flowers will prevent them from dying. Rain counts as watering your flowers and you can use flowers to re-grow worn out grass by planting the flowers on worn out grass and watering the flowers every day.

If you have lots of flowers, we recommend enacting the Beautiful Town ordinance.

Breeding Flowers

Getting a rare flower is a happy time indeed.

In addition to planting flowers you can cause two of the same type of flower (e.g. two roses) to breed by planting them next to each other (or diagonally to each other) and then watering them with the watering can.

If there is a space open next to each parent, there is a chance that a new flower will bloom there the next day. You can increase the likelihood of breeding flowers by planting flowers near a Jacob’s Ladder or burying fertiliser from Leif’s shop.

When breeding flowers, the new flower (offspring) will be the same colour as one of the parent flowers. E.g. if you breed two red cosmos, you will get another red cosmos or if you breed a yellow cosmos and white cosmos, you’ll get a yellow cosmos or white cosmos.

However, if you breed a certain combination of flowers, there’s a chance you’ll get a special colour. E.g. if you breed a red cosmos and a white cosmos, you can get a red cosmos, white cosmos or pink cosmos .

Furthermore, offspring will inherit the colour “traits” from their parents and while an offspring may look like one colour, if you breed it, it can count as one of two colours. E.g. from the above example, the offspring red cosmos can act as a red cosmos OR white cosmos when you breed it.

So while normally a red cosmos and a red cosmos will produce a red cosmos ONLY, if one of the red cosmos has a white cosmos parent, you can get a pink cosmos or white cosmos too!

This table below outlines the most useful combinations of breeding flowers.

**Flower 1** **Flower 2** **Possible Outcome**
Red Cosmos White Cosmos Pink Cosmos
Red Cosmos Yellow Cosmos Orange Cosmos
Orange Cosmos Orange Cosmos Black Cosmos
- - -
Red Carnation Pink Carnation Red or Pink Carnation
Pink Carnation Pink Carnation Red or White Carnation
- - -
Red Lily White Lily Pink Lily
Red Lily Yellow Lily Orange Lily
Red Lily Red Lily Black Lily
- - -
Red Pansy Yellow Pansy Orange Pansy
White Pansy White Pansy Blue Pansy
Red Pansy Blue Pansy Red Pansy (blue trait)
Red Pansy (blue trait) Red Pansy (blue trait) Purple Pansy
**Flower 1** **Flower 2** **Possible Outcome**
Red Rose White Rose Pink Rose
Red Rose Yellow Rose Orange Rose
White Rose White Rose Purple Rose
Red Rose Red Rose Black Rose
Black Rose (wilted) Gold Watering Can Gold Rose
Orange Rose Purple Rose Red Rose (orange/purple trait)
Red Rose (orange/purple trait) Red Rose (orange/purple trait) Blue Rose
- - -
Purple Violet White Violet Blue Violet
Purple Violet Yellow Violet Blue Violet

Some flowers are rare and take a long time to breed (e.g. blue roses), so don’t be alarmed if you don’t get them straight away.

Once you’ve gotten two or more of the same colour and type of flower, don’t forget you can breed them together to easily get more (note that gold roses do not breed).

Hardly the best weather for growing flowers, but it works!

If you’re dead keen on breeding a particular flower (e.g. a blue rose), we recommend harvesting some original flowers from the Garden Centre or from Tortimer Island (by playing the flower-collecting mini-game) and using those as the parents.

If you breed together flowers of unknown origin, you’re more liable to get unwanted offspring, as you don’t know what colours “traits” they have.

Additionally, keep separate gardens for breeding flowers and plant your flowers in an alternating grid pattern (first row is 1010.. then second row is 0202… and repeat, where 1 is Flower 1, 2 is Flower 2 and 0 is an empty space).

This way, only the flowers that you want to breed will touch eachother (and thus be able to breed), further minimising unwanted offspring.

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Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Nintendo
  • Platforms,
    3DS
  • Genre
    Social simulation
  • Guide Release
    29 July 2013
  • Last Updated
    7 December 2020
  • Guide Author
    James Bowden

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Animal Crossing: New Leaf sees you crowned mayor as a result of a bit of an accident. When you arrive, Isabelle the town clerk will reveal that you’ve been given the post and from there you can do whatever you please! Use your powers as the mayor to shape the town however you wish, whether this means building bridges, creating public works projects or laying down laws (or ordinances as they are known). With all this freedom, you could soon have the home and town of your dreams!

Version 1.1:

  • How to get the most out of those vital first few days in town.
  • The easiest ways to stuff your coffers with loads of money.
  • Detailed information on every shop in Main Street.
  • Exact dates for every Special Event in the entire game!
  • Complete your encyclopaedia with every Bug and Fish in the game!
  • Where to find every special visitor and what they can offer you.
  • A full furniture list so you can find exactly what you need to build the perfect home.
  • Beautiful screenshots and exclusive HD 3DS tutorial videos with audio commentary!
  • Comprehensive list of furniture, wallpapers and carpets.
  • Comprehensive list of clothes and accessories.
  • Special event pages for the snowman season and Weeding Day.
  • List of all the decorative public work projects and who requests them.

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