Gardening (The Sims 4)

Gardening is a skill included in The Sims 4. It primarily focuses on a Sim's ability to grow different types of plants. The plants grown through gardening can be sold or in some cases used in recipes.

Learning
Gardening skill is mainly built by tending various garden plants. To do so, the player must purchase seeds or have a Sim harvest wild plants and plant them. Then, the plants must be regularly watered, weeded and eventually harvested. Sims may also read a Gardening skill book, and the unlocked abilities to "Research Gardening" and "Talk to Plants" will also build Gardening Skill.

Grafting
After attaining level 5 Gardening, Sims gain the ability to cut and graft plants. This allows them to make hybrid plants that grow multiple harvestables at once. To graft two plants together, the sim simply needs to take a 'cutting' from one plant, and graft it onto another. The second plant will then need to regrow, but after reaching maturity will bear its original harvestable, as well as the harvestable of the plant that was grafted onto it. Certain grafting pairs will produce a third harvestable on the plant, unrelated to the original two. This is the only way to obtain several rare harvestables. After discovering one of these unique pairs, the 'recipe' will be added to that Sim's notebook. Because there are two possible recipes to create Bonsai Buds, only the first one discovered will show up in the notebook. Grafted plants produce harvestables at the rate of the base plant, not the plant that came from a 'cutting.' They also will start at the quality of the base plant. Multiple plants can be grafted onto one base plant, but plants can only hold up to 10 harvestables, grafted plants will split that randomly between all types. Mushrooms are the only plant that you cannot cut or graft. Too many 'cuttings' will kill a plant. Depending on the plant, they can survive 1 to 3 cuttings.

Plants
There are 33 Plants that can be collected, (50 with every Expansion Pack) and they are collected through finding them in the wild or Grafting them together to earn rare specimens.

The Gardening Collection
Harvesting one of every base game plant will complete the Gardening Collection and award the Go, Green Thumbs! plaque. Plants from the various expansions are shown in but not required to complete the Gardening Collection.