The Sims 4 Gardening Guide: Plant Your First Seeds

You can grow ordinary herbs, flowers and vegetables in the updated base game. You do not need Cottage Living, a greenhouse or a gardening career. Start with one container and one starter packet: it is easier to spot a missing step before filling the whole yard.

The cottage garden pictures are original Pixel Twelve illustrations. They explain the objects and planting sequence, not the exact look of every game item. The labeled Live Mode image below comes from an older official EA manual; surrounding buttons can differ by platform or update.

Load your household, then look at the top-right toolbar for the crossed hammer and wrench. Select that button to open Build Mode, where you place furniture and garden objects. The enlarged official icon below is your landmark.

In the catalog at the bottom left, use the Search field and enter Garden Pot. Choose the result whose item card has that name: it is a planting container with visible soil, not an ordinary decorative vase. Garden Planter Box is the larger alternative. The picture below shows their different shapes; colors and styles can vary.

Place the container on an open patch beside the house. Keep the side your Sim will approach free of fences, furniture and dense decorations. A stone path and a few flowers can make it feel like a cottage garden without blocking the working space.

Return to Live Mode, where your Sims move and act. Select the pot or planter you placed, then choose Purchase Seeds from its interaction choices. In the purchase window, pick an available starter type such as Starter Herbs or Starter Vegetables, set the quantity to one, and confirm with the checkmark at the window’s bottom right.

The packet goes to the Sim who bought it. Buying a packet does not plant anything yet. For this first garden, stay with ordinary starter packets: Purchase Oversized Crop Seeds and the Garden Patch belong to a different Cottage Living system.

Stay in Live Mode and keep the buying Sim selected. Their portrait is at the bottom left. Look at the small tabs along the bottom-right edge: Inventory is the storage-box tab between Relationships and Simology in EA’s labeled example. On PC or Mac, hover until the tooltip says Inventory, then open it. On console, focus that tab and use the select prompt shown by your game.

Find the purchased packet in that panel. Select the packet and choose Open Seed Packet. Separate fruit, flowers or vegetables will appear there. Those loose items are what you plant; you do not drag the unopened paper packet into the soil.

On PC or Mac, drag one loose item from personal inventory onto an empty patch of soil in your planter. After placing it, select the item on the soil and choose Plant. On console, use the inventory’s item-move control and its on-screen prompts to place it, then select the placed item. Do not choose Eat if you want to grow it.

Let your Sim finish the planting action. A planted item begins as a soil mound, not a fully grown vegetable. If Plant is missing, first check that you placed loose produce rather than a packet and that the spot is valid soil. If the Sim cannot reach it, clear the route beside the planter.

Select the planted mound or growing plant. Choose Water when that option is available; the close-up below shows the watering action. As it grows, look for unwanted weeds or bugs and use the matching Weed or Spray for Bugs option when needed. Keep checking the plant rather than assuming every crop takes the same time.

With Seasons installed, hover over a plant to read its growing-season information. An out-of-season outdoor plant can be dormant rather than broken. Without that pack, you do not need to solve a seasonal growing restriction for this basic setup.

For the walls, doors and usable paths around your new garden, follow our first-home Build Mode guide. Want a landscape project beside it? The garden pond guide explains the terrain and water tools. Our Sims 4 guide hub groups the rest by what you want to do.

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