The Sims 4 Gardening Skill Guide
If you’ve ever wanted your sims to connect with the earth they should learn the sims 4 gardening skill.
This skill lets your sims grow their own food that they can turn into so many things with DLC additions!
What is Gardening Good For?
Gardening is awesome if you want your sims to grow their own food, or to sell them for money.
You can use all gardening ingredients along with the cooking skill to create higher quality food for your sims.
You can also use the gardening skill with the gardener career that came with Seasons.
Plus, you’ll need gardening fruits and vegetables for things like juice fizzing or nectar making when you add different DLC!
How to Gain The Sims 4 Gardening Skill
There are two ways to gain the gardening skill in the game, the first is through skill books. These can be purchased through any bookcase in the game and there are three gardening books you can get:
- Gardening Vol 1: Water, Light and Dirt
- Gardening Vol 2: Getting Your Thumbs Green
- Gardening Vol 3: Strange and Forbidden Plant Genetics
You’ll want to start with water, light and dirt and once you get three levels of the skill you’ll need to move onto the next book. These are great for gardening because you can’t garden all day unless you spend tons of money on a huge lot to plant things on so you can have your sims read after their work is done.
The other way to gain the skill is to actually garden. Your sims will gain a little bit of the skill every time they water, tend, weed and plant.
At level two of the sims 4 gardening skill your sims will be able to gain the skill on the computer through research. You can find this open under web > research > research gardening and this will give your sims a focused moodlet.
You can also click on a plant and choose research and your sim will gain the skill during this time and you’ll get information in your sim’s notebook about the plants.
Another way your sims can gain this skill is with a bonsai tree. Your sims can prune this tree into different shapes and it will make them feel focused when they’re doing it.
When your sim has finished pruning their tree they can examine it and get a happy moodlet from that!
Another way you can get a bonsai tree is by planting bonsai buds and evolving them to be excellent quality, then you’re able to convert them to be decorative!
How to Get Started Growing Plants
You have three options for where you can plant your crops, the first is to just plant them right into the ground. The other two are things you need to purchase from build mode! You can get either a planter box that can hold four plants or a garden pot that can hold a single plant.
Once you place the garden pot or planter, or decide that you want to plant into the ground you need some seeds. You can either purchase seeds or find plants around the world.
Purchasing seeds is easy, you can find seed packets in build mode or click on a garden pot and choose purchase seeds. You can also buy them from the computer!
Once you have seed packets in your sim’s inventory you can click and choose to open them. You’ll get a random collection of plants you can start gardening with. You’ll want to drag them from your sim’s inventory to where you’d like to plant them.
Once you have them where you’d like to plant them you can click on it and choose plant. Your sim will plant everything that’s on the ground or in a planter in the area.
If your plants end up in weird locations, you can go into build mode and move and straighten them out.
How to Care for Plants
Now that you’ve planted your crops you need to start caring for them. The first thing you need to do is water them, this unlocks with level 1 of the skill so easy! Just click water all and your sim will water any plants that are around.
The next thing you need to know how to do is weed those same plants. You’ll see weeds pop up after a few days and your sim will start slowly weeding but it gets faster as you gain the skill.
Another problem that may occur is bugs who are mean and want to destroy your hard work. To make these go away you just click on that plant and choose to spray area for bugs and your sim will do this and your bug will go away.
When your sim reaches level 9 of the skill, they’ll gain the ability to tend garden. This is awesome because your sim will do all weeding, water and bug spraying back to back without you telling them whta to do.
Harvesting Your Plants
Harvesting is how you get your plants from the garden to your sim’s inventory! You’ll be able to click harvest all and your sims will harvest anything in a small area.
If you have no desire to keep any of the plants and just want to sell them for money, you’ll eventually unlock super sell where you can click one button and it will auto harvest and sell everything in a small area saving you so much time.
Fertilizing & Evolving Your Plants
If you really want to make good money or have higher quality food from the gardening efforts you do, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to make it happen.
The first thing you can do is fertilize your plants! You’ll click a plant and choose fertilize and any plants in your sim’s inventory can be used.
The other thing you need to do is make sure to evolve your plants. After a few days of growing a plant you’ll notice that they are sparkling, this is when you can click on them and choose evolve.
The purpose of evolving plants is to increase their quality! Your plants will go through a process from normal to perfect in this order:
- Normal
- Nice
- Excellent
- Magnificent
- Perfect
A plant will start to be worth more money the better the quality, so for example, a snapdragon of normal quality sold for §16 but a perfect quality sold for §43.
Grafting Your Plants
A fun part about gardening is that you can graft plants together to create other plants or weird grafted plants. To do this you’ll need to have a plant fully grown and choose take cutting and you’ll see a spliced garden shoot in your sim’s inventory.
You then go to the plant you’d like to graft onto and choose graft and it will create a different plant. If there’s a grafting combination you’ll see the new plant name when you hover, if there isn’t one you’ll see spliced plant when you hover.
A plant that is created without a grafting combination will just give your sim both types of plants when harvested instead of just the one.
You can learn which plants can graft with others by using the research function and looking at the information in the notebook!
Grafting Combinations
There are so many combinations you can create with grafting different items together to get other things you can plant, and these are the ones I found in the base game:
- Snapdragon + Strawberries = Dragon Fruit
- Cherry + Apple = Pomegranate
- Basil + Sage = Parsley
- Bluebell + Strawberry = Grapes
- Chrystanthemum + Tulip = Birds of Paradise
- Daisy + Strawberry = Bonsai Buds
- Dragon Fruit + Snapdragon = Cowplant Berries
- Grape + Rose = Bonsai Buds
- Orchid + Pomegranate = Death Flower
- Snapdragon + Lily = Orchids
Best Mood to Practice Gardening
Every single skill you want your sims to gain in The Sims 4 has an ideal mood to gain the skill more quickly. For gardening the ideal mood is focused.
A few ways you can get your sims focused include playing chess, using a telescope and playing games on a computer. At level two of the skill your sim can also research gardening at a computer which can make them feel focused.
Best Traits for The Sims 4 Gardening Skill
Whenever I make a new sim I spend some time thinking about who I want them to be. Their traits have a huge impact on their ability to gain skills and their enjoyment of things. The traits I love to use for gardening sims are:
- Genius: Since the best emotion for this is focused the genius trait is good. Genius sims are more likely to randomly feel focused!
- Loves The Outdoors: A sim who gets into gardening is going to spend tons of time outdoors so the loves the outdoors trait is great. It’s going to give them a positive moodlet!
- Loner: Gardening can require a sim to spend a lot of time outside by themselves so you may want to consider the loner trait so they aren’t bothered by being alone.
You should also consider adding lot traits to your sim’s household to gain skills even quicker! There’s a few that can be helpful for gardening:
- Homey: Increases gardening skill gains
- Great Soil: Comes with The Sims 4: City Living, this lot trait increases your plants growth rate by 10%
How to Cheat The Sims 4 Gardening Skill
Every skill in The Sims 4 has a cheat that lets you skip past the actual effort part of it all. The cheat for gardening is stats.set_skill_level Major_Gardening 10 to max out the skill.
If you want a different level of the skill you can change the number at the end to whatever level you want, for example, stats.set_skill_level major_gardening 3 will give you level three of the skill.
Gardening Skill Levels
There are ten levels of the gardening skill to gain and as you gain it you can unlock new rewards and fun things your sims can do to make the experience better!
| Skill Level | Level Rewards |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Your sim can plant, water and weed. |
| Level 2 | Your sim can research gardening at a computer, research individual plants to unlock information in the notebook and water plants in a nearby area. |
| Level 3 | Your sim finds fun while gardening and can now fertilize plants. |
| Level 4 | Your sims can now talk to plants to fulfill their social need and harvest plants in a nearby area. |
| Level 5 | Your sim can now take cuttings and graft to create hybrid plants. |
| Level 6 | Your sim is becoming a true agriculturalist and is now able to weed plants in a larger area. |
| Level 7 | Your sim can purchase uncommon and farmer seed packets. They can also spray for bugs in a larger area now. |
| Level 8 | Your sim can now overgrow pruned bonsai trees to re-shape them. They are also able to super sell plants in a large area. |
| Level 9 | Your sim continues to improve her gardening mastery and can now tend garden, efficiently doing all their watering, weeding and bug spraying at once. |
| Level 10 | Your sim is now the ultimate gardener, they are able to purchase rare seed packs, each containing one of the most exclusive, most expensive plants found anywhere. |
Cooking High Quality Food
The quality of food your sims are cooking with the cooking skill changes based on their skill levels as well as the quality of the ingredients. You have the option to just cook from no ingredients or you can use ingredients that are in your sim’s inventory.
This means that you can use perfect quality produce to make really high-quality food!
Making Money With Gardening
I’m not the biggest fan of having my sims have boring jobs because then I only get to play with them for a few hours per day so gardening is one of my favourite ways to earn money.
If you spend time gaining the skill, evolve your plants and take good care of them you can make so much from having even just a small garden!
Sims 4 Gardening Skill Mentorship
Mentoring is a great aspect of the game where a sim with a high level of the skill is able to mentor others. When a different sim is gardening your sim with high level can mentor them so they can earn the skill more quickly. Gardening is a weird one and sims actually need to have level 2 of the skill to be mentees!
If you have The Sims 4: Business & Hobbies installed your sims are able to offer paid gardening mentoring for money. If a sim has level 10 they’ll get paid 430 per hour to do this!
Types of Seed Packets
There are a whole bunch of different seed packets for your sims to purchase and more come with DLC too! Below you’ll see the types of plants you can expect to get from these seed packets.
Starter Herbs
- Basil
- Parsley
- Sage
Starter Fruits
- Tomato
- Apple
- Strawberry
- Grape
- Plantain
Starter Vegetables
- Onion
- Mushroom
- Carrot
- Spinach
Starter Flowers
- Chrysanthemum
- Snapdragon
- Daisy
- Bluebell
Uncommon Plants
- Cherry
- Tomato
- Rose
- Blackberry
- Lily
- Bonsai Bud
- Trash Fruit
Farmer Herbs and Veggies
- Parsley
- Mushroom
- Carrot
- Spinach
- Sage
- Basil
- Onion
Farmer Flowers and Fruit
- Chrysanthemum
- Snapdragon
- Daisy
- Bluebell
- Tomato
- Apple
- Strawberry
- Plantain
- Grape
Rare Seeds
- Growfruit
- Birds of Paradise
- Death Flower
- Cowplant Berry
- Pomegranate
- Orchid
- Dragon Fruit
- Magic Beans
- These are what you use to get a plant sim!
Growing Cowplants
Technically you don’t need the gardening skill to grow a cowplant, but you will find the cowplant berry in gardening packs that you can only purchase with a maxed skill. You can also find these berries when fishing or when doing dig spots too.
Once you have a cowplant you’ll plant it in the ground like any other gardening seed. However, this one is a bit more mischievous. This creature has interactions like feed, pet and play with, you can also name them!
If you fail to feed a cowplant for 12 hours they are going to have a cake coming out of their mouth and if a sim eats this they will not have a good time.
The first time they eat it they’ll get a spit back out with a bad moodlet and feeling scared.
When this happens you can milk them to get an essence beverage to give your sim whatever mood they had when they were swallowed, like a happiness essence.
The second time a sim is swallowed they are going to have the horrible death experience of being eaten by a cowplant. When this happens grim will appear and they will be reaped.
You can milk the cowplant after a death for a cowplant essence which will set the sim who drinks it’s lifespan back to the beginning!
Using The Death Flower To Avoid Death
One of the most interesting things about The Sims 4 are all the ways you can avoid death or bring sims back. What you want to do is have a death flower in a sim’s inventory, but not the sim who might die. So, if Eve is about to eat a cowplant’s cake you want Adam to have a death flower.
Once the Grim Reaper appears you’ll want to wait a second them click on them while controlling the death flower holding sim, and you’ll choose to give Grim the death flower. This will automatically save that person from death!
Improving The Sims 4 Gardening Skill With DLC
Seasons
The interesting thing about gardening is that it gets so much better when you add in The Sims 4: Seasons to your game. It adds a ton of difficulty and gameplay which makes it so much more fun!
Adding Sprinklers
One of my favourite small additions to gardening is sprinklers that you can purchase in Seasons. These are wonderful because they make it so you no longer need to water your own plants!
You’ll place these sprinklers with plants around them and you can use them instead of having your sims have to manually water each plant everyday which saves so much time.
There are even upgrades your sims can make to the sprinkler to make it even better!
- Puddle Prevention: Prevents sprinklers from creating nearby puddles
- Unbreakable: Prevents your sprinkler from breaking
Dealing With The Weather
The weather doesn’t have a huge impact on your plants day to day life, except for rainy days. These are the absolute best because they will water all of your plants for you! Hot weather doesn’t have an impact so you don’t need to worry too much about that, but you will need to worry about seasons.
PSA: Don’t spent too much time out during thunderstorms, my sim had the unfortunate experience of dying from being struck by lightning… twice. So any screenshots featuring her for the rest of this will be a ghost.
Seasonal Plants
The biggest impact Seasons has on the sims 4 gardening skill is seasonal plants. This pack assigns a season (or two) to each plant and adds seasonal seed packets to the game that you can purchase after level 4 of the skill. Below you’ll find lists of the types of plants you can get in these seasonal packs:
Spring Seed Packs
- Green Pea
- Lemon
- Strawberries
- Bluebells
- Tulip
- Daisy
- Carrot
- Rose
- Snapdragon
Summer Seed Packs
- Bell Pepper
- Begonia
- Tomato
- Plantain
- Cherry
- Blackberry
- Basil
- Green Bean
- Lily
Fall Seed Packs
- Dahlia
- Snapdragon
- Rose
- Begonia
- Pear
- Grape
- Apple
- Lemon
- Onion
- Carrot
- Green Bean
Winter Seed Packs
- Holly
- Pear
- Snow Drop
- Potato
- Crocus
- Onion
- Lemon
- Spinach
- Christmas Rose
If you want to get around the seasonal plants system you have the option to grow plants indoors instead. You can do this using the garden pots and they will grow year-round as long as there’s a roof and walls around them.
Patchy The Straw Man
The final fun thing you can experience with Seasons is Patchy The Straw Man. You can purchase him from the build menu and place him on your lot and you have the chance to bring him to life!
To get Patchy to come to life you’ll want to click on him and do some social interactions, eventually you’ll get a notification telling you that you’ve unlocked a scarecrow outfit and that’s when you know he’ll come to life soon. It might not happen right away, but usually the next day he will come to life and start helping you care for your garden by doing things like water and weeding.
You also have other interactions with Patchy like asking for gardening tips which will gain you the sims 4 gardening skill and searching his pockets for seeds which will give you random seeds in your inventory.
You can make your sim a little odd by just having them socialize with Patchy, you can even take it far enough where you can romance and woohoo with him!
Beekeeping
Seasons also brought us beekeeping which is a fun addition to the game, as long as your bees are happy and you have a good relationship with them.
To get bees you’ll want to purchase the Bertie’s Bee Box and place it around your garden.
You’ll want to interact with your bees and try to bond with them, you can bond only when not wearing a beekeeper suit which means there is a chance your sim will get stung.
Once you start building a relationship with your bees you’ll see an option to collect swarm. This will put bees in your inventory with a 5 hour time clock. You can click on these and choose to pollinate nearby plants.
Doing this pollination exercise will help to increase the rate at which your plants can evolve to make them higher quality, so you can sell them for more money.
Eco Lifestyle
My favourite part about The Sims 4: Eco Lifestyle is the ability to add vertical planters to your sim’s lot. These let you grow plants on top of each other in a smaller footprint which is awesome for smaller lots!
You’ll just need to purchase the A-OK-Bloomer Vertical Garden from the build menu and place it on your sim’s lot.
Once you have this you can click on it and purchase seeds that are meant for a vertical garden that will appear in your sim’s inventory and you can plant, weed, and water them like normal.
There are even upgrades you can add to your sim’s vertical garden including:
- Automatic Pest Control System
- Automatic Watering System
Adding these two things will make it so your sim never has to spray for bugs or water their plants.
