Free gardening games

What makes a good gardening game

A gardening game is about tending something and watching it grow. You sow, you water, you wait, and then you harvest, sell or simply enjoy what came up. Most of the games here move through the seasons, so spring blossom gives way to summer flowers, autumn colour and snow, and some plants only do well at the right time of year. The pace is gentle and nothing is lost by stopping to look.

The eight games on this page cross several categories: farm sims about crops and bees, a tycoon game about a plant nursery, a design tool for laying out a garden, two pet games set in a garden, and two Easter games that appear only while the Easter category is in season.

Gardening games to start with

Garden Designer is the calmest: brush in lawn, paths, gravel and a pond, plant trees, roses, tulips and vegetables round a shed and a greenhouse, then press play and watch the garden walk through the year. You can keep six gardens and take a picture of your favourite. Harvest Hollow is a farm sim in which you break the ground with a hoe, plant ten crops that each suit their own seasons, sell at the market stall, fill orders on the village board and expand with chickens, cows and new fields.

Bee Meadow is gardening for bees. You sow clover, lavender and sunflowers, place hives where the forage is thickest, smoke a box before you open it and sell the honey, knowing that a jar from a single-flower meadow is worth more. Plant Nursery runs a garden shop: sow seed trays, water the benches, pot on the seedlings and match each customer's wish, from a plant for the shade to a hanging basket, before the frost nights arrive.

Two pet games grow things too. In Bunny Garden you grow carrots, lettuce, parsley and dandelions to hand-feed your rabbits, and in Bird Feeder you keep the seed topped up and the bath fresh until twenty garden birds come to visit. In the Easter season, Spring Garden is a logic puzzle about planting tulips so no two of a colour sit side by side, and Carrot Patch is a small garden tycoon where you share vegetables with hungry bunnies and sell the rest at the spring market.

Tools, controls and a few growing tips

Most of these games work the same way: pick a tool, then use it on a square. In Harvest Hollow and Bee Meadow the number keys pick tools and a click on a square plants or places; in Plant Nursery you click a seed packet, then an empty spot. Garden Designer paints the ground with a drag, R turns a piece and Z undoes. You pan by dragging or with the arrow keys and zoom with + and −, and P pauses and M mutes.

All eight play on phones and tablets: tap a tool, tap a square, and pinch to zoom. A few tips follow from how the games work. Plant crops in the seasons that suit them in Harvest Hollow, keep hives apart in Bee Meadow, because crowded colonies starve, and in Plant Nursery bring tender plants under glass before a frost night.

Frequently asked questions