The Garden Flipper DLC adds a whole new aspect of gameplay to the base game House Flipper. Where previously you were limited to flipping, renovating, and decorating the interiors of the properties you buy, the Garden Flipper DLC lets you extend your design sense to the courtyards outside of the houses.
Whether you want to create a food forest on a lot or turn it into a hedge maze, you can do a lot of things with this DLC. You can also enter the gardens you design in gardening competitions which, depending on placement, give a bonus to your selling price.
7 Use indoor pools outdoors
If you have the Luxury Pinball DLC, a variety of pools are added to the game that you can place inside buildings. But did you know that although they are called indoor pools, you can also put these pools outside?
These pools are generally larger than the pools added with the Garden Flipper DLC, so they’re great for larger yards that you’re not sure how to fill. They also go well with the surface tiles provided in the DLC, so with a little work you can create a really nice swimming area.
6 Don’t bother turning the lawn mower around
The lawnmower is one of the landscaping tools added in the Garden Flipper DLC, and while it can mow the overgrown lawn neatly, it can also trim weeds in its path, making it useful for clearing yards quickly.
The tricky part lies in the way it’s controlled. It’s quite finicky when turning, so it’s much easier to just park the mower in a corner of the yard, mow in a straight line, switch tools, then take the mower back out and mow a new line.
5 Always enter the gardening contest
Even if you haven’t touched your property’s garden at all and don’t intend to, always enter the gardening contest. The entry price is negligible and most standard yards are placed high enough in the American Garden competitions to increase the selling price of the property by around 5 to 10 percent. But if you like interior decoration games, you will probably also enjoy decorating the yards, so you might as well try it.
There is also no penalty for entering the gardening competition multiple times; You just have to wait at least 10 minutes between entries and pay another entry fee (which is still a negligible cost). That way, if you find that a few small changes improve your ranking, you can implement those changes and jump in again.
4 Use plants instead of fences
If you want to separate parts of your garden, try using plants instead of fences. The plants category in the gardening competitions is generally the hardest to get full marks. So using a few extra plants for this can give you the extra points needed for a perfect score. With a big enough yard, you could even try making a hedge maze in case you want a maze to sneak through or you want to increase the game’s existing crawl factor.
Foliage plants like conifers can work very well for this, as they improve plant scores in both the American Garden and Modern Garden competitions. But if you want to change things up, you can also use fruit trees of different varieties, especially if you’re making a crop garden entry.
3 Plan your garden type in advance
Selecting a single garden type ahead of time can help you get a good score when entering a gardening contest. There are five to choose from: American, Crop, English, Modern and Japanese and rather than trying to add elements from all of them to the garden you are decorating, choose one and stick with it.
While you don’t have to plan every element at once, having a rough idea of your layout in mind before you begin work can make designing the garden a little easier. The English Garden competition values asymmetrical, organic-looking layouts, while Modern Gardens performs best with very geometric and organized layouts.
2 Line paths with lights
If you have a lot of solar lights in your garden, this will be noticed by the competition judges, and you will also be able to see better when decorating at night. One of the best ways to style your lights is to line your paths with them.
This is because you can use lines in the cobblestones as markers for your light placements, ensuring you maintain symmetry and even spacing between lights. It also looks quite nice when taking screenshots at night.
1 Don’t be afraid to spread things
The yards on the various lots are generally quite large, so while it can be tempting to only group things into one part of the yard, in practice it can leave a lot of empty areas, which will lower your score in the layout category competitions.
Instead, try to space things out and consider yard size when choosing which theme to use. Grain gardens can easily be expanded into a larger garden, and Japanese gardens work well in smaller spaces.
