Flower Garden Solitaire: reading a deal with nothing hidden
Flower Garden hides nothing. Thirty-six cards are laid out in six flower beds of six, and the other sixteen are held in your hand as the bouquet, all face up. Any card in the bouquet can be played at any time. There is no stock, no redeal and nothing to turn over: the whole game is in front of you from the first second.
That makes it a pure planning game, and a surprisingly tough one to measure. Our solver, which sees exactly what you see, found a win in 43.3% of 2,000 deals and proved 5.4% impossible. The other 51.4% were still unfinished when it reached its search limit, so all we can honestly say is that somewhere between 43.3% and 94.7% of deals can be won.
What the Flower Garden deal tells you
| What we measured | Result | Deals | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aces that start in the bouquet (of 4) | 1.26 on average | 2,000 | Deal inspection |
| Solved when 2 or more Aces start in the bouquet | 44.2% (95% range 40.7–47.8%) | 747 | Solver |
| Solved when 0 or 1 Aces start in the bouquet | 42.8% (40.1–45.5%) | 1,253 | Solver |
| Solved, all deals | 43.3% (41.1–45.5%) | 2,000 | Best-first solver, 200,000-position limit |
| Proven impossible | 5.4% (4.5–6.4%) | 2,000 | Same solver |
| Unfinished at the search limit | 51.4% | 2,000 | Same solver |
We know of no published figure for Flower Garden to check these against.
Flower Garden rules on klondike.nz
The layout
- One pack of 52 cards, all face up.
- Six columns, the flower beds, of six cards each (36 cards).
- The bouquet: the other 16 cards, laid out where you can see them all.
- Four foundations, built up in suit from Ace to King.
Moves
- Any card in the bouquet can be played at any time, to a bed or a foundation.
- In the beds, a card may go on the next higher card of any suit: any 5 on any 6.
- Only one card moves at a time. You cannot move a run in a single step.
- Any card may go into an empty bed.
- There is no stock. You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations.
Reading the deal
Aces in the bouquet are less helpful than they look
The average deal puts about 1.26 of the four Aces in the bouquet, where you can play them straight away. It feels like a good start. But our solver's success barely moved with it: 44.2% of deals with two or more bouquet Aces were solved, against 42.8% with none or one, and the two ranges overlap. The Aces you can play immediately are not what decides the game.
Look at what sits under each Ace in the beds
The Aces that matter are the ones buried in the beds. Count how many cards are on top of each one; the deeper it is, the more bouquet cards and building you will need to reach it.
See the bouquet as a toolbox
Because you can take any bouquet card at any time, the bouquet is sixteen cards of flexibility. The trick is not to spend it too early. Every card you move from the bouquet into a bed is a card that has lost its freedom.
Strategy
Build in any suit, but think about suits anyway
You may put any 7 on any 8, but the foundations still need cards in suit order. A bed with the 7 of hearts on the 8 of spades is fine now and in the way later if you need the 8 of spades before the hearts are ready.
Remember runs move one card at a time
With no run moves, a long stack in a bed is hard to relocate. Keep beds shallow where you can, and prefer building on beds you will not need to dig through.
Aim for an empty bed
Any card can go into an empty bed, so clearing one gives you a parking space for anything. Beds start at six cards, so choose the one with the most cards you can send elsewhere.
Use Undo as your pencil
Flower Garden is a game of planning several moves ahead. Try a line, and if it closes the game down, undo and try another.
Planning a Flower Garden game
A useful way to start is to choose one suit and plan its route home. Find its Ace, 2 and 3, note which bed or bouquet each is in, and work out what must move to free them. Once that suit is flowing, pick the next. It turns a table of 52 cards into a series of small, solvable problems, and it stops you spending bouquet cards on moves that don't serve any plan.
Similar games
If you like open-card planning, try FreeCell, Eight Off or Simple Simon. For a much stricter open game, try Baker's Solitaire, where only Kings may fill an empty column.
Playing Flower Garden on klondike.nz
Free, nothing to download or sign up for, in any modern browser on computer, tablet or phone. Big, readable cards with a zoom control, drag or tap to move, Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play. Wins, time and moves are tracked, and the sound can be switched off.
Where these numbers come from
The klondike.nz team measured Flower Garden in September 2026 using the rules in this site's code.
- Rules from our code. Six beds of six and a 16-card bouquet, all face up; any bouquet card playable; building down in any suit, one card at a time; any card into an empty bed; no stock.
- A program copy of the game. We rebuilt the game as a program from those rules.
- Numbered deals. 2,000 deals from numbered seeds, so the test can be repeated exactly.
- Reading each deal. We counted the Aces in the bouquet and split the results by that count.
- The solver. It sees all 52 cards, just as you do, and tries up to 200,000 positions per deal.
- Comparison. We found no published figure for Flower Garden.
- Error bars. "Solved" has a 95% range of 41.1–45.5%, but with 51.4% unfinished, the real share of winnable deals could be anywhere from 43.3% to 94.7%.
- Limits. Many deals needed more search than our limit allowed. A bigger run would narrow the range, and we have not done that yet.
Under the bonnet
The code is Python 3.11 with only the standard library, in the module flowergarden.py. The solver is a best-first search: it always explores the most promising position next, keeps a record of positions already seen, and only makes foundation moves that are provably safe. A shared runner spreads deals across processor cores with multiprocessing, and the 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals. We used an AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, to help write and review the code and to draft this page; the numbers come from running the code.
Questions players ask
Which bouquet cards are available?
Yes. Every bouquet card is available at any time.
Why does every move shift just one card?
Flower Garden on this site moves one card at a time. It is part of what makes the planning matter.
What share of deals are winnable?
At least 43.3% in our tests, and possibly many more; our solver left over half its deals unfinished, so the true figure is somewhere up to 94.7%.
Does it matter if the Aces are in the bouquet?
Much less than you might think; our solver's success rate was almost the same either way.
Is Flower Garden a good game for beginners?
The rules are easy to learn, because nothing is hidden and any card can build on any other one rank higher. Winning takes planning, so it suits players who enjoy thinking a few moves ahead.
Where can I read about this site's study?
On our about page and the main Klondike page.
By Admin, klondike.nz. Study date: 19 September 2026.