Gardening in The Sims 4 can be both fun and lucrative! We’ll break down everything you need to know!

Did you know that you can garden in The Sims 4 base game? If you didn’t, you do now! We’re going to walk new players through the basics of Sims 4 gardening! Gardening is not only a fun and relaxing hobby for your Sims, but it also be extremely lucrative! Embark on a Sims 4 gardening career and get your Sims grafting in their garden to create unique plants! Let’s dive right into everything you need to know about gardening for fun and profit in The Sims 4! We’ll teach your Sims how to garden like pros!

The Sims 4 Gardening Guide

Starting Your Garden

It’s very easy to start a Sims 4 gardening plot. Purchase a planter box from Build/Buy and click on it to buy seed packets. To start with, you’ll only be able to buy starter seeds but you’ll unlock better seeds as your Sim levels up in the Gardening skill.

Open the seed packet in your inventory and drag the contents into the planter boxes, then click them to plant and water them. You can also plant seeds on bare ground. Fruit that grows on trees (like apples and plantains) need a large planter box to themselves or the equivalent amount of space around them on bare ground. Plant smaller plants in groups of four in large planter boxes. You can fit one small plant in small planters. If your seed fails to germinate, try planting it somewhere with more space.

Maintaining Your Garden

Just like real life, The Sims 4 gardening requires TLC. Your plants need to be watered, weeded, and sprayed for bugs regularly. Check on your plants daily to see what they need. There are visual signs your plants will give when they need attention.

• Dull, brownish leaves: This plant needs water.
• Flies swarming around the plant: This plant is infested with bugs. Spray it with pesticide.
• Grass and dandelions at the base: This plant needs to be weeded.

You can also fertilize them to increase their quality. You do not need to fertilize your plants to keep them healthy; plants evolve over time as long as their needs are met. Fertilizing them just gives them a boost and helps them evolve faster. Every plant has five quality levels.

• Normal
• Nice
• Excellent
• Magnificent
• Perfect

The higher the quality of the plant, the more valuable its produce will be. You can use any fish, flower, herb, fruit, or vegetable as fertilizer. Most flowers, fruit, and vegetables don’t offer much of a boost except the rare Growfruit, which is the best fertilizer in the base game. If you don’t have Growfruit, you should use fish, which is also very good fertilizer.

Fully mature plants will produce a harvest every day at 5am. Make sure you’re on your home lot at that time. If you are not, the plants won’t produce a harvest that day. Use your produce to cook or sell them.

Sims 4 Gardening Grafting

At level 5 of The Sims 4 Gardening skill, your gardener Sims 4 pro will be able to start grafting plants. Grafting is the process of taking a cutting from one plant and attaching it to another plant to create a new type of plant. Some of the rare plants in the base game are only discovered through grafting. You can also use grafting to reduce the size of your garden if it’s becoming a lot to maintain.

To graft, take a cutting from a plant, then choose Graft on another plant and select the sample you took. You might create a new type of plant or you might just combine the two plants into one. This can be useful for making your garden more compact.

Check your Sim’s notebook to see all The Sims 4 gardening and grafting combinations you’ve discovered! You can also check out this handy grafting list compiled by our good friend Carl.

Gardening Skill

Your Sim will build the Gardening skill from tending to their garden. The Gardening skill has 10 levels. Building your Gardening skill will make maintaining large gardens much easier. As you progress in the skill, you’ll unlock the ability to buy rarer seeds, super sell all your produce at once, and water and weed larger sections of your garden at a time. The better your Sim is at Gardening in The Sims 4, the more efficient they’ll be at taking care of their garden.

You can boost the speed of your Gardening skill gain by making sure your Sim is in the Focused emotion. Learn more about emotions in our beginner’s guide!

For a detailed breakdown of each level of the Gardening skill, check out our in-depth guide!

Sims 4 Gardening Career? Why Not?

There’s no Sims 4 gardening career in the base game. You’ll need the Seasons expansion for that; however, that doesn’t mean you can’t make a living as a gardener in the base game!

If you have a beautiful garden full of high quality and rare plants, you might be interested in selling them as a full-time job. To do this, go to the Business app on your cell phone and select Register with the Ministry of Labour. Give yourself the job title of Gardener and you are officially self-employed in your own gardening career in The Sims 4!

Enjoy spending your days getting your hands dirty growing beautiful and delicious produce to sell!

Gardening with Seasons

This guide focuses on gardening in The Sims 4 base game but for players with Seasons installed, they’ll have to plan out their gardens a little differently to accommodate the weather.

If you own the Seasons expansion pack, not all your plants will bloom year-round. Most plants only grow in specific seasons so make sure you check the plant’s description to see whether your plant is dormant or in season.

If you want to protect your Sims 4 garden from the weather, you can grow them indoors. Sheltered plants will not go dormant when it isn’t in season so you can continue to harvest from them year-round. Sheltered plants have a ceiling above them.

It’s not all bad, though! One benefit to gardening with the Seasons expansion is that you won’t need to water your outdoor plants when it’s raining. The rain will water them naturally.

Loved our Sims 4 gardening guide? Put your gardening skills to the test with this Harvest Moon inspired challenge!