The Sims 4 Freelance Botanist Aspiration
If you love plants and want to grow them virtually you should try the sims 4 freelance botanist aspiration!
This aspiration comes with the base game of The Sims 4 and has your sim growing everything they can.
When a sim finishes this aspiration they’ll become a naturalist and never have to fear fire again!
Collector Bonus Trait
When you have a sim who starts their life with a nature aspiration they’re going to get the collector bonus trait. This trait makes it s o your sims are more likely to get rare collectibles like fossils or elements.
This is a great one to have if you’re doing the curator aspiration but isn’t too helpful for this one!
Best Traits for The Sims 4 Freelance Botanist Aspiration
Choosing the right traits for your sims can make you gain skills faster and finish aspirations like this one quicker. Here’s some good traits for this gardening aspiration:
- Loves The Outdoors: Gardening mostly happens outside unless you build a greenhouse, so you’ll love having this trait for a sim who wants to garden a ton.
- Genius: The ideal mood for gaining the gardening skill is focused and genius sims get focused moodlets often.
- Practice Makes Perfect: Sims with this trait start by gaining skills slower, but eventually you’ll see major skill boosts. Plus, you get some great focused moodlets.
You may want to purchase some rewards store traits for your sim too, here’s some fun ones:
- Morning Sim (1,000): Your plants will be ready in the morning so you can have extra skill gains in the morning when you tend to it.
- If you have The Sims 4: Seasons in your game, you may want to add some of the weather traits to your game like:
- Heatproof
- Storm Chaser
- Waterproof
- Super Green Thumb (4,000): Sims with this trait will have their plants survive better and won’t die!
There are also really awesome lot traits to add to your sim’s house to make gardening go better:
- Great Soil: This trait comes with The Sims 4: City Living and says “gardening just seems to go really well here”
- Homey: This base game lot trait makes your sim gain the gardening skill faster!
If you have The Sims 4: Tiny Living you can even have your sim live in a 32 tile micro home for more benefits. Sims in a micro home will see their plants grow twice as fast as normal! You’ll also gain skills faster so you can grow your gardening skill so fast!
Stages of the Aspiration
There are four stages of the sims 4 freelance botanist aspiration to play through and each includes different tasks to do. Your sim will need to plant and care for plants and eventually even grow a cowplant!
Stage One: Naturewalker
- Plant Something 3 Times
The very first stage of this aspiration has your sims starting off by planting something 3 times. You’ll need to decide if you want to plant directly into the ground or using pots and boxes. You can find these items in build mode!
Once you have a place to plant, you’ll need seeds! You can find plants around the world to harvest and then plant those or purchase seeds instead. You can find the option to purchase seeds on the computer, by clicking on pots or boxes or in build mode.
Once you have these seeds in your inventory you’ll want to open the seed packets and then drag the individual items to where you want to plant them. Then, click on them and choose plant! Do this 3 times to satisfy this need.
- Weed or Water Plants 10 Times
Now that you have plants you’ll need to care for them! For this you’ll need to either weed or water 10 times, but you’ll be able to do this super easy.
To water plants click on them and choose water or if you have lots of plants in one area choose water all and your sim will bring out a watering can and do it.
Your other option is to weed your plants. This is a more rare occurrence but once in a while you’ll see weeds around the base of your plants and you can click on them and choose weed. Your sim will start on their knees dealing with weeds but when they get a higher skill they’ll pull out a wild machine to do it.
Stage Two: Garden Variety
The first thing you need to do for the second stage is reach gardening level 4. You’ll be earning the gardening skill anytime you do gardening interactions including planting, watering, and weeding. You can also use the research option when you click on a plant to earn the skill too.
You also have the option to purchase and read gardening skill books to gain the skill without actively gardening.
If you want higher quality plants that you can harvest you’ll need to evolve them. A few days after you’ve planted something (if you’ve cared for it) you’ll notice that it has started sparkling and this is when you can evolve it!
When this sparkle happens you can click on the plant and click evolve and the quality of that plant will increase!
Stage Three: Nature Nurturer
To start off stage three of this aspiration you’ll need to reach gardening level 6. At this point you’ve done a decent amount of gardening and you’ll already be pretty close. Just keep doing gardening interactions or reading those skill books!
Grafting plants allows you to take a plant and mesh it with another to create hybrid plants or create new plants entirely! It’s a very fun to do because you can get more rare plants like the death flower.
The first thing you’ll need to do is take a cutting of the first plant you want to graft by clicking on it and choosing take cutting. This unlocks at level 5 of the gardening skill!
Doing this will place the garden shoot in your sim’s inventory and you can click on the other item and choose graft and graft the two together.
If there is a pre-determined plant that the two create together it’ll change to that plant, if not it will become a spliced plant that will make both types of plant that you grafted together.
- Fertilize 5 Plants
The next thing your sim needs to do is fertilize plants five times! To fertilize you’ll need the right items which include things like fish, other plants, insect farm fertilizers from Eco Lifestyle, and more.
To fertilize your plants you’ll click on the plant and choose fertilize and then a menu will open and you get to pick which item you want to use to fertilize. Do this five times to satisfy this need.
Stage Four: Freelance Botanist
Your sim will need to max their gardening skill for this aspiration, which honestly isn’t too hard if you have a huge garden. You can also purchase a bonsai tree and gain the skill with that!
If you want to cheat the skill instead you can use stats.set_skill_level major_gardening 10 to do so.
Growing a cowplant is an important part of every simmer’s journey, and is one of those silly things I love. First, you’ll need a cowplant berry in your sim’s inventory. You can find these in some weird ways like by fishing.
However, at level 10 of the gardening skill you’ll unlock the ability to purchase rare plant seed packets for 1,000 simoleons and you can find these in there!
Once you have a cowplant berry you’ll want to drag it onto the floor and plant it. You’ll care for it in this stage just like other plants by watering it until it fully grows and is a weird little cow plant guy.
To care for your cowplant you’ll do things like feeding it, playing with it and petting it. Make sure you feed it because if it shows cake and your sim eats it… your sim can die!
- Evolve 10 Excellent Plants
Your final task is to evolve 10 excellent quality plants, which is the third rank for anything you grow! You’ll have to first evolve it from normal to nice and then from nice to excellent.
To evolve these plants wait until they start to sparkle and then click on them and choose evolve and the plant will increase in quality. This means it will sell for more and anything you use it for (i.e., cooking or flower arrangements) can have higher quality from it!
Naturalist Reward Trait
When a sim manages to finish the sims 4 freelance botanist aspiration they are going to be given the naturalist reward trait. This trait’s description says “Sims that are naturalists don’t need to fear fire; it won’t touch them and they can extinguish it with ease.”
Okay, I love this reward trait. However, it feels super random that it applies to an aspiration about gardening? Maybe it’s supposed to be like an earth and fire thing, who knows. But! Your sim will never need to worry about dying from fire ever again!
