Beginner's Guide to Wizard101 Gardening

Gardening in Wizard101 is very profitable and, though it takes a good amount of effort, rewards greatly with mega snacks and expensive treasure cards. In this guide, learn how to start your garden and keep it thriving in Wizard101.

The Basics – Getting Started

First, you’ll need to get the first gardening quest. This quest is obtainable by talking to Moolinda Wu in the Life School in Ravenwood upon reaching level 12. That quest will walk you through how to garden and tend to plants. You can also read this guide, which goes over what is mentioned in that quest and a little more. Gardening takes place in your dorm room, or preferably castle. The Red Barn Farm from the Crown Shop is the best way to start your gardening journey as you can buy it for gold.

Energy

Energy is a big part of gardening. You can see how much energy you have by looking at the yellow crystal bar next to your mana. Whenever you use a gardening spell, special spells that only work when tending to plants, you’ll lose energy. You regain energy by either waiting for it to refill or from purchasing an Energy Elixir from the crowns shop for 250 crowns. There are also ways you can increase your maximum energy.

Your base energy correlates almost directly with your level. So if you’re level 100, you’ll have a maximum of 100 energy. (This comparison doesn’t hold up at lower levels.) Furthermore, certain gear can increase your maximum energy. Though there is some free energy gear that you can obtain from farming bosses like Tse-tse Snaketail, the best energy gear is found within hoard packs. This guide goes wonderfully in depth describing how you can reach a huge amount of energy.

Setting Up Your Garden

If you want to take care of your plants well, you’ll need to create a garden. If you’re still stuck in your dorm room, you’ll need to purchase pots. These pots can be bought from Farley in Golem Court. You can also buy your beginner seeds from Farley. Seeds will require specifically sized plots or pots, so make sure you grab the right pots.

If you own a castle that has an outside area with earth (like the Red Barn Farm), you will be able to create plots. Plots are small areas of soil created by gardening spells found by Farley and an assortment of other trainers. You can create plots with energy instead of buying pots for gold. I highly recommend plots over pots, since you don’t need to spend gold on them.

You should also make sure you actually bought the gardening spells you need from Farley. You can find him and his brothers in many places throughout the Spiral. Some spells have a larger range than other spells. For example, the Warming Rays spell will only satisfy one plant’s need for a sun for a small amount of energy, while the Brilliant Beams spell provides a large area sun for a greater amount of energy.

The Best Starter Plants

There are many plants in the game, but only some are worth farming for. When starting out, I recommend going for seeds that give the most amount of gardening experience.

Key Limes are great plants for gaining experience.They give 3000 experience on an elder harvest (their final harvest before needing to be replanted, indicated by the plant turning almost transparent), and 300 on a normal harvest. You can take advantage of these plants so you can gain the levels for better ones with better loot. The easiest way to farm for these plants is to fight Iklaw Warriors in the Savannah in Zafaria, or by fighting Hobgoblin Fiends on the High Road in Avalon. These plants also have a chance to reseed themselves multiple times without you needing to use their seed, effectively cloning themselves.

Once you’ve reached level 3 in gardening, you can start planting Couch Potatoes. These plants are one of the best you can get in the game, rewarding you with rank 9 mega snacks and expensive treasure cards on elder harvest. They are a rare drop from defeating most enemies in Grizzleheim, but are more commonly found in higher level worlds such as Mirage and Empyrea. Their needs are easy to take care of, and can be grouped together to increase efficiency.

Plant Needs

Plants have different needs that include Sun, Rain, Pollination, Magic and Music. Not all plants have all these needs. In fact, you will find that most plants only have a specific combination of these needs. Let’s take an example.

Evil Magma Peas – This plant, one of the most popular in the game, will only ever require rain, pollination and music. No other gardening needs are observed for this plant.

A plant will indicate what it currently needs by either hovering your mouse over it or by looking at the symbol over it. You will generally notice small icons that indicate the current need it requires. If the plant is not indicating anything, then you don’t need to do anything. Save your energy! If you have a large garden and you’re not sure whether some of the plants require any needs because they might be hidden, then the gardening menu button will indicate it for you. If it is showing a green healthy looking plant, it means that all needs in that castle are met.

Common Mistakes

There are many common mistakes that rookies make that will make your gardening experience much more difficult than it needs to be.

Grouping Plants

When gardening, it’s really important to group all plants of the same type together. Plants are predictable, and will have the same needs at the same time as their peers of the same type. This is why you should keep those plants close to each other, so you can use spells with a large radius to cure all of their needs quickly.

Defending Against Pests

Pests are evil spirits that will glide around your plant preventing it from growing. If you don’t deal with pests, they can kill your plant, resetting all your progress with harvests. Pests have ranging levels that will require higher level and more expensive spells to defeat. I recommended treating your plants with spells that prevent pests for a long period of time, since pests usually appear when you’re offline.

A great spell to use is Summon Pixie. You can buy it from Charley in The Oasis at Krokotopia for 175,000 gold. It’s very expensive, but not only does it protect your plants from pests for 48 hours, but it also boosts their growth! If that’s too expensive for you, you can just buy the Pungent Bug Spray spell from Harley in the Celestia Base Camp. It prevents rank one pests from bothering your plants for 48 hours and it only costs 10,000 gold.

Too Diverse

It’s really easy to just get a bunch of different plants and put them all together. I strongly advise against this. Most plants have other plants that they enjoy being around and dislike being around. If they’re around plants that they like, they’ll grow faster. If they are around plants that they dislike, their growth will be stunted.

It is important to read up on plants that you obtain and want to grow to make sure you have the best conditions to grow them. For example, most plantshate the Stinkweed plant, so you should keep it away from other plants in your garden.

Tips and Tricks

There are certain good practices that you should get in to when gardening, and I will try to introduce you to them now.

Plant’s “Likes” and “Dislikes”

Each and every plant has certain things that it likes to be around and things it hates to be around. As mentioned previously, you should try to maximise the things that plants like so they’ll grow faster. For example, Couch Potatoes love to be placed next to the furniture item Litter. If they’re around this item, they’ll grow a little bit faster. Research plants that you want to grow in mass and see what they like.

Red Barn Farm

The Red Barn Farm is a castle that is purchased in the crowns shop for 12,500 crowns, or 125,000 gold. I recommend that you buy it for gold, since gold can easily be farmed. It has a bunch of open space outside designed for plots, and most plants like being there. Just planting in the castle increases efficiency by up to 15%.

Large Radius Spells

Investing in large radius spells is super profitable. Though they might be expensive and require a high gardening rank, they affect a large range of plants at once, making them really efficient when farming a bunch of plants of the same type grouped together. If you plan on making a specialised farm of one plant, like an Evil Magma Pea farm for mega snacks, these large radius spells are a requirement. While on the subject of Evil Magma Peas or (EMPs), these are some of the spells you will want to obtain if you have a large garden of them.

Conclusion

These are all the basics you’ll need to know to start your journey of becoming a gardening master! If you follow these tips and check on your plants everyday, you’ll gain gardening levels in no time.