The first time you try gardening in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you'll be able to plant a range of different flowers, each of which comes in several different colors. These are available in the Timmy and Tommy store, Nook's Cranny (or in Tom Nook's tent if Nook's Cranny hasn't been built yet). However, there are actually a number of flower colors that cannot be purchased from stores and can only be obtained by crossing flowers that you have already grown! Read on for everything we know so far about hybrid flowers in New Horizons.
Plant flowers
You'll need to start by planting regular flowers - at the start of the game, Nooklings will usually sell a few different colors of common varieties like tulips, sunflowers and pansies. The flowers will only hybridize with others of the same species, so you will have to buy, for example, red tulip seeds and white tulip seeds. Plant some in the grass outdoors, making sure there is an empty space between the pairs of flowers you want to hybridize.
You'll probably get better results by planting the flowers in an X-shape, so that one is at each corner of a three-by-three square, with a fifth flower taking the middle tile (see images above ). Don't forget to water the flowers you planted daily after this, as this will help their chances of producing a hybrid. Eventually, a hybrid should bloom between a pair of flowers you planted, according to the color combinations listed below. Remember that hybrids are not guaranteed to appear on any given day, and there may be some variation in the flower produced. If you are growing flowers native to your island, there is also a slight chance that a different hybrid color will be produced instead!
Hybrid
A number of color combinations produce hybrids, with different colors available for certain flowers. Keep in mind that some special hybrid flowers will be identical to one of their parents (making it hard to tell they are hybrids) but can actually be used to produce unique offspring – these are marked with 'a * to distinguish them from their regular counterparts. In other words, the same cross could produce two different results depending on whether the mother flowers are both hybrids or not. Here are all the color combinations discovered so far:
Tulips
- Red + Red = Black
- Red + white = pink
- Red + Yellow = Orange
- Orange + Orange = Purple
Roses
- Red + Red = Black
- Red + white = pink
- Red + Yellow = Orange
- White + White = Purple
- Orange + Purple = Red *
- Red * + Red * = Blue
Cosmoses
- Red + white = pink
- Red + Yellow = Orange
- Orange + Orange = Black
Violets
Lilies
- Red + Red = Black
- Red + white = pink
- Red + Yellow = Orange
Chrysanthemums
Pansies
- White + White = Blue
- Red + Blue = Red *
- Red * + Red * = Purple
- Red + yellow = red-yellow
- Red-yellow + Blue = Red-yellow *
- Red-yellow * + Red-yellow * = Purple
