The Nature Day celebration in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a take on the real-world Earth Day, brings players a new event to take over island life.
Nature Day may have missed its traditional April 22 date, but like Bunny Day, it’s sticking around far longer than in the past and runs through May 4 following the 1.2.0 update. In past Animal Crossing games, Nature Day was a small event offering few unique interactions with villagers and a Cool Globe furniture item reward obtained by chatting with Tortimer or Isabelle before the day was done. In New Horizons, the two-week event coincides with the release of placeable shrubs to shake up your island’s foliage.
Buying shrubs and flowers from Leif isn’t a Nature Day-exclusive deal. He’ll show up periodically just like Kicks and Label. What Nature Day is good for, however, is the event-exclusive Hedge fence recipe.
Nature Day Rewards
Nature Day is all about taking a moment to care for the world around us. To help encourage green fingers, you’ll get a 5x Nook Miles bonus to nature-related activities once a day throughout the event. Tom Nook will point out that the reward is only available for Nook Miles+ members, so you’ll have to have unlocked that particular feature before you can start raking in the points.
Eligible Nook Miles activities will have a big green border around them for clear visibility. They’ll involve planting the new Shrub Starts at first, but we expect other activities, like gardening and tending to flowers, to take the bonus spot from time to time, too. Get your watering can ready!
Nature Day Leif items
Nature Day also ushers in the re-introduction of Leif, a horticulture-obsessed sloth who follows in the footsteps of Kicks and Label by going freelance in New Horizons. Rather than heading up his own gardening store, he’ll occasionally pull up in front of your Residential Services building to peddle his plants and show off his shrubs. Talk to him out front, and you should be able to buy everything you need to give your island a more colorful and cared-for look.
His selection of seeds beats out what Timmy and Tommy Nook offer in their cabinet, and while you won’t find any tree saplings on the back of Leif’s wagon, it’s the only place you’ll find shrubs. Here’s what he brings:
- Pink-azalea start
- White-azalea start
- Pink-camellia start
- Red-camellia start
- Red-mum bag
- Red-rose bag
- white-mum bag
- White-rose bag
- Yellow-mum bag
- Yellow-rose bag
Animal Crossing Nature Day Shrubs – How do they work?
So what’s the big deal with shrubs, anyway? How do they work? Good question. Shrubs fall somewhere between a tree and a flower. Unlike what the release video showed, they can’t be bought and placed in a fully-grown state straight from Leif. The shrub takes a couple of days to grow.
They’re not always in season, either, meaning the pretty flowers adorning them won’t stick around forever. Leif remarks that the Azalea shrubs he has with him right now are in season, suggesting the two Camellia shrubs might not be. We’ll have to wait a few days to confirm that, but the aforementioned release video does only show the White and Pink Azaleas in bloom.
Another thing Leif offers is to buy your weeds at a premium. We’ll assume he’s offering twice the price of the Nooklings to encourage the time-consuming effort of plucking every single one of them from the island, but who knows what he’s up to. Leif is a strange sloth. Double the price means Leif buys weeds for 20 bells a clump, making it not a bad way to earn a few extra bells while he’s around. That said, you’ll need 10 weed clumps to craft the Nature Day exclusive recipe, so you might want to hold onto them for now.
Nature Day Hedge recipe location
Though this latest event introduces decorative shrubs and an easier way to start breeding that perfect flower garden, the only Nature Day exclusive is the Hedge DIY recipe.
To grab the Hedge DIY recipe, all you need to do is complete your first Nature Day Nook Miles activity and check in with Tom Nook at the Residential Services building. He’ll talk about what he wants you to do, remark that you’ve already done it, and beam the recipe over to your phone straight away.
It’s a fence craft, so you’ll get a stack of ten from one set of materials. Paired with the new shrubs and more easily accessible flowers, you won’t have to rely on trees alone to keep your town looking good.
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