How do I get my Sim to garden?

Gardening is one of the most flexible skills in The Sims 4. If you have the Seasons Expansion Pack installed, it's even better, as it naturally pairs with Flower Arranging to be one of the most profitable skills in the game (though it's still eclipsed at high levels by Writing and Painting). Without the Seasons expansion pack, its profitability is limited but still high enough that it should be considered by most Generation-1 Sim families, especially given its low cost of entry.

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Depending on your gameplay style and goals, Gardening can take up most of a Sim's day and serve as their main job, or it can be a passing hobby that is used to support other aspects of life. At a basic level, a Sim can grow flowers or fruits and vegetables for their own private, occasional use. At most, it can be an incredibly time-consuming skill if the plants grown are then sold for a hefty profit.

The Seasons Expansion Pack added several quality-of-life and other changes to Gardening, including how plants are sold. These changes are listed in the next section of this page.

Gardening has a fairly low starting cost depending on the size of the operation you wish to run. You can purchase "Garden Pots" from Build Mode in Function Sort > Activities and Skills > Outdoor Activities. However, garden pots are only necessary if you wish to grow crops indoors. If you plant outside, you can do so directly into the ground. Even better, as long as you care for your plants, they will grow forever; you won't need to worry about soil rotation or anything that complex. For this reason, it's paired well with the Fishing skill, as fishers can use the fruits and vegetables for bait, or gardeners can use fish as fertilizer for their crops.

The immediate cost all Sims will need to make is a starting pack of seeds. These can be purchased from any computer; if your Sim doesn't have a computer of their own, they can be bought from the public computers at the library or through gardenening pots. Depending on the type, seed packs can be a bit pricy, but you only need one to get started. All crops are considered seeds as well, so if you have an apple and want to grow an apple tree, it's as simple as dragging it out of your Sim's inventory onto the ground, then interacting with it. Seed packs generally have six seeds each.

To get started, place a seed or crop on the ground outside or on the dirt of a gardening pot. This can be done by opening the Sim's inventory panel and click-dragging the item onto its destination; it is not necessary to exit Live Mode or to pause the game. Then, have a Sim interact with the item and choose the "Plant" command. Note that large plants, such as apple trees, must have enough room to grow or your Sim will give you an error message.

After a crop is planted, it must be attended to every day. All crops require the same care: daily watering, and weeding at least every other day. At Gardening Level 7, Sims can execute a single "Tend Garden" command at any plant, allowing them to water and weed all their crops with just that single command. It will still take the same amount of in-game time to do everything that needs to be done, but it will save you as the player dozens of clicks!

Once a crop is done growing, it will lightly sparkle to indicate it's ready to be harvested. Sims can harvest individual plants or their whole garden with the "Harvest" and "Harvest All" commands respectively. Even at Level 7, these commands must be initiated; the "Tend Garden" command will not also harvest plants.

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As a Sim grows in Gardening levels, they will gain the ability to take cuttings from plants (up to three from the same plant) and graft those cuttings onto others. Grafting allows you to convert one plant into another, allowing you to access new crops. The new crops can then be replanted to grow more without additional graftings.

Grafted plants are generally incredibly rare and powerful, some being used for the most dramatic items in the game. For example, if you wish to grow the ever-popular Cowplant (which eats other Sims and drains their life force so your Sims can become younger), it requires you to be growing either a Dragonfruit or a Snapdragon plant. Then, you need to take a cutting from the other, and graft it onto the original. It doesn't matter which is the cutting and which is the original, and once grafted and grown, they will produce a cowplant berry.

Death Flowers are also important high-level items, as it's an ingredient in the Ambrosia recipe that can revive dead Sims. To create a Death Flower, you must graft apples and cherries to make pomegranate, lilies and snapdragons to make orchids, and finally pomegranates and orchids to make the Death Flowers themselves.

If a garden becomes so large that it feels overwhelming, know that you have several ways you can make the job a little easier. Even without any expansion packs installed, you can use your phone to call a professional gardener who will come by every day and water all plants on your property, both inside and outside the house, as well as do any necessary weeding. They will leave all harvesting to you.

If you have the Vintage Glamour Stuff Pack installed, you can hire a butler who can do the same thing. As with maids, a butler can be hired simultaneously as a professional gardener if your garden is exceptionally large.

Finally, if you have the Seasons Expansion Pack installed, you can purchase and befriend a Patchy to help you out. For more information on Patchy, see below.

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Seasons Changes

The Seasons Expansion Pack added a number of significant changes to Gardening.

New Interface

Prior to Seasons, you could mouseover plants to see their quality and relative condition. However, this was represented by a flower face (smiling when watered, angry when not) that was surrounded by white petals that indicated the health level. However, rarely were plants only at medium health, so the popup ultimately gave little information.

That has been replaced by the new interface you see above. There is no longer any indication on the popup of whether a plant has been watered, although the dirt is still a darker color if it has been. Further, the "Water" interaction will be grayed out if you click a plant that doesn't need any hydration.

The meter on the new interface shows the plant's quality. The overall quality is further segmented into five pieces, and a meter slowly fills from left to right as the plant is cared for. When the meter reaches a white line, its quality will freeze until a gardener interacts with the plant and choose "Evolve." Doing this will make a light circle the plant, permanently increasing its quality (and that of its flowers or fruit) to the next level.

Also, a new commanded is listed on the pie menu called "Sell X" or "Sell All" (where "X" is the name of the crop of the plant you clicked on). This command makes your Sim outright sell any produce immediately, thus saving you a step of harvesting the items to your inventory, and then selling it from there.

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Seasons and Rain

Rain is prevalent during the spring and summer months, and is helpful for gardeners. During any rain or storms, all outdoor plants will be water automatically, thus saving you time and money.

Be careful during storms, as Sim-grown fruit trees have a slightly higher chance of being struck by lightning as other outdoor objects. Your Sim won't want to be standing next to one!

Weather isn't the only thing to consider though. With the Seasons Expansion Pack, all plants now have a season in which they grow. When a plant is out of season, it still needs to be tended to, but it will not grow and cannot evolve. You can see whether a plant is in season by mousing over it.

This makes keeping a variety of plants important if you wish to make a full side job out of it. Indoor plants have no seasonal restrictions, so wealthy gardeners who depend on them can build a massive grow facility to do most of the work.

The Gardener Career

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The Seasons Expansion Pack also adds a new career. Sims can apply and become a gardener through their phone or any computer just like any other career. Like the three careers introduced in the City Living Expansion Pack, the gardener career can be performed at home.

Even better, the gardener career is by far one the easiest and least time-consuming careers to have despite a low wage. Generation-1 Sims can make a killing by getting into the gardener career, working from home, and having a side job in Flower Arranging to make an incredible amount of early money without Cheats. Some of the early at-home tasks may include reading about the Gardening skill (via a skill book for less than an in-game hour), watering a plant, or harvesting a plant.

Possible Bug Note: If an at-home gardener has the job task of harvesting a plant, but instead you order the Sim to "Sell" the finished plant, the Sim will not clear the task. It's unknown if this is by bug or by design, but it's presumably a bug since selling the plant necessitates harvesting it as well. To prevent this, simply be sure to do a "Harvest" or "Harvest All" command if you have the "Harvest a Plant" task, and then you can sell the item from your Sim's inventory as normal.

Even if you do much of your gardening at home (whether out of choice or because you're doing Flower Arranging too), having the Gardener Career as a backup is great when your plants are out of season. Alternatively, it makes for a great career option for otherwise stay-at-home parents, as the quick job tasks will still give your Sim plenty of time to spend on other matters without sacrificing their career progress.

Patchy

The Seasons Expansion Pack also introduces a new scarecrow friend named Patchy. You can purchase him (the full item name is Patchy the Straw Man) for §450 from Build Mode in the Functions Sort > Activities and Skills > Outdoor Activities area.

Patchy can be placed anywhere outside but does little at first. There are no pests or other issues to worry about with your plants aside from the usual weeding, so at first he may not seem like anything more than a decoration. However, your Sim can speak to him and start gaining relationship points with him every day.

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When your Sim reaches a high enough relationship level, Patchy will spontaneously come to life and start hanging out at your house. He acts as a full Sim and can be interacted with as normal, but he has a special AI routine that makes him want to garden. You can speak to him directly as well when he's on his sticks and request some gardening help. You can only make the request every 12 hours, but that should be plenty of time for him to help water or weed your plants on a large farm. When paired with a butler and a professional gardener, Patchy can ensure even the largest operations flourish even if your Sim decides to put his feet up and take it easy.