Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Leif’s Garden Shop and shrub planting guide

There’s some new special characters now able to visit your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, with the return of Leif and Redd in update 1.2.0.

While Leif had a full on shop in New Leaf, for New Horizons he brings his Garden Shop with him to occasionally visit your island. However, he’s a key part for the new Nature Day event that’s running from now until 4th May. He’ll also bring new shrubs that you can use to spruce up your island with.

We’ve got plenty of other walkthroughs and tips for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and more on the way. Visit our game hub to check those out.

When will Leif visit my island?

Once you’ve updated to version 1.2.0, the next day you start between 23rd April and 4th may will see the announcement of Nature Day by Isabelle. Leif will visit your island that day and can be found in your island’s plaza. He will also be a more frequent visitor to your island throughout Nature Day.

Note: If you trigger Isabelle’s daily update before updating to version 1.2.0, Leif will not appear that day.

What does Leif sell?

Leif’s Garden Shop stall comes with a small variety of different flowers that aren’t common to your island, but the best thing the gardening sloth brings to the island are shrubs, costing 280 Bells each.

Shrubs are a new addition to New Horizons in version 1.2.0, but have been found in previous games like New Leaf. These used to be called bushes in New Leaf in the UK, but I guess we’ve been americanised now. They’re somewhere between trees and flowers in how they work, which gets Leif in a bit of a spin as he tries to explain them!

Oh, Leif will also buy Weeds from you at double the rate that Nook’s Cranny does. That’s 20 Bells per clump instead of 10.

What shrubs does Leif have?

Leif will bring a rotating selection of shrub starts with him, which can include:

  • pink azaleas
  • white azaleas
  • pink camellia
  • red camellia
  • holly
  • blue hydrangeas
  • pink hydrangeas
  • orange tea olives
  • yellow tea olives

So how do shrubs work?

Shrubs are basically single space bushes that can flower in a seasonal fashion. In the Northern Hemisphere, Leif will start off selling Azaleas which, as luck would have it, are in season right now! This does mean that shrubs will be flowerless for most of the year, until they come into season.

You can buy shrubs one at a time, or in groups of five, and they’re planted exactly like flowers – just stand on the spot you want the shrub to be planted, select the shrub you want from your inventory you can plant it in that spot. However, from that point on they work like trees, and will grow over the next few days without the need for watering.

What you might need to be aware of is shrub chaining. This was an element in New Leaf whereby a chain of adjacent  shrubs could only extend 12 bushes long, with the thirteenth not growing. This included trees, stumps and worked in all eight directions. We’ll test to see if this still applies in New Horizons.


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