Growing a Flower Paradise

Learn how to breed flowers in Animal Crossing: New Leaf to create rare colors like pink, orange, purple, blue, and gold roses. Includes breeding combinations and tips.

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) and watering them. If there is an open space next to each parent, a new flower may bloom there the next day. You can increase the likelihood of breeding flowers by planting them near a Jacob’s Ladder or burying fertilizer from Leif’s shop.

When breeding flowers, the offspring will be the same color as one of the parent flowers. However, breeding certain combinations can result in special colors. For example, breeding a red cosmos and a white cosmos can yield a red cosmos, a white cosmos, or a pink cosmos. Offspring inherit color traits from their parents, meaning a red cosmos offspring might have a white cosmos trait, allowing for further breeding possibilities.

This table outlines useful breeding combinations:

Some rare flowers, like blue roses, take a long time to breed. Don’t be alarmed if you don’t get them immediately. Once you have two or more of the same color and type of flower, you can breed them together for more (note that gold roses do not breed).

If you are keen on breeding a particular flower, it is recommended to harvest original flowers from the Garden Centre or Tortimer Island (via the flower-collecting mini-game) to use as parents. Breeding flowers of unknown origin increases the chance of unwanted offspring due to unknown color traits.

To minimize unwanted offspring, keep separate gardens for breeding and plant flowers in an alternating grid pattern (e.g., first row 1010.., second row 0202.., where 1 is Flower 1, 2 is Flower 2, and 0 is an empty space). This ensures only desired flowers touch and can breed.