Flower Garden Solitaire: every card in view, and a bouquet to pick from
Flower Garden is one of the most open solitaire games there is. All 52 cards are face up from the first second: 36 of them in six "flower beds" of six cards each, and the other 16 in a "bouquet" you can pick from freely. There is no stock, no hidden card and no luck of the draw once the cards are down. What remains is a puzzle you solve at your own pace.
It is also a game where our study could only narrow the odds, not pin them down. Our solver proved 43.3% of deals winnable and 5.4% impossible, but more than half were too tangled to settle. So the true share of winnable deals lies somewhere between 43% and 95%.
Flower Garden by the numbers
| What we measured | Result | Deals |
|---|---|---|
| Deals the solver won | 43.3% (range 41.1–45.5%) | 2,000 |
| Deals proven impossible | 5.4% (range 4.5–6.4%) | 2,000 |
| Deals left undecided | 51.4% | 2,000 |
| Aces that start in the bouquet | 1.26 of 4, on average | 2,000 |
| Solved with 2 or more Aces in the bouquet | 44.2% | 747 |
| Solved with 0 or 1 Ace in the bouquet | 42.8% | 1,253 |
"Undecided" does not mean lost. It means our search ran out of room before it could say either way.
How Flower Garden works here
Six beds and a bouquet
- Six flower beds (columns) of six cards each, all face up.
- The bouquet: the remaining 16 cards, all face up.
- Four foundations, built up by suit from Ace to King.
What you can pick up and where it goes
- Any card in the bouquet can be played at any time, onto a bed or a foundation. You are not limited to the end card.
- In the beds, build down in any suit: any 6 can go on any 7.
- Only one card moves at a time in the beds. There are no run moves.
- Any card can go into an empty bed.
Why Flower Garden is hard to call
Flower Garden gives you a lot of freedom: any bouquet card, any suit for building, any card into a space. That freedom is exactly what makes it hard to analyse. From many positions there are dozens of possible moves, so the number of paths explodes, and a search with a fixed budget often cannot reach the end of them.
That is why so many deals came back undecided. With more time and a bigger budget, some of those would be solved and a few more proven impossible. For now, the honest answer is "at least 43%, and very possibly much more".
Does it matter where the Aces start?
You might expect Aces in the bouquet, where you can play them at once, to make a big difference. In our deals they barely did: 44.2% were solved when two or more Aces started in the bouquet, and 42.8% when none or one did. The difference is small enough to be chance.
The lesson for your own games: do not judge a deal by its Aces. What matters more is how badly the beds are tangled.
Playing a Flower Garden session
Treat the bouquet as a reserve, not a to-do list
Because you can play any bouquet card at any time, there is no rush. Leave cards there until they have a clear job, such as going on a foundation or freeing a card in a bed.
Win yourself a free bed
An empty bed takes any card and gives you somewhere to park while you rearrange. With one-card moves only, that space is precious.
Build long runs in one bed at a time
Any-suit building lets runs grow quickly. Concentrate them in one or two beds so the others can be cleared.
Think about which card each card needs
Before moving a card from the bouquet, check it will not cover a card you need soon. With single-card moves, burying a card can take many moves to undo.
Let the session breathe
There is no stock ticking down and no timer pushing you. Flower Garden rewards a slow, thoughtful session more than a quick one. If a deal feels stuck, try Undo and a different first move from the bouquet; with this much freedom, the order you play in matters a great deal.
Flower Garden on a phone or tablet
Six beds fit comfortably on most screens, but a 16-card bouquet takes room. On a phone, turn sideways and zoom so you can tap bouquet cards cleanly. The game keeps your moves and time for the current deal, and you can switch the sound off.
Flower Garden next to other all-face-up games
Several games on this site show every card from the start. Our study measured them with the same kind of solver, which makes an interesting comparison:
| Game | Solved | Proven impossible | Undecided |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flower Garden | 43.3% | 5.4% | 51.4% |
| Simple Simon | 86.5% | 5.2% | 8.3% |
| Eight Off | 99.89% | 0.11% | 0 |
Flower Garden and Simple Simon had a similar share of proven-impossible deals, around 5%. What sets Flower Garden apart is the huge undecided share, a sign of how many different paths each deal opens up. For a player, that means lots of choice at every turn, and plenty of room to find your own way through.
How we did the research, step by step
In September 2026 the solitaire-online.nz team added Flower Garden to its study, to see how many deals on this site's rules can be won.
- Rules from the site code. Six columns 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 to a space; no stock.
- A copy of the game. We wrote these rules into a program.
- Numbered deals. 2,000 deals from seeds 1 to 2,000.
- A solver. Every card is visible, so the solver plays the same game you do. It always explores the most promising position next, and plays cards to the foundations automatically only when they could never be needed in the beds.
- A limit per deal. Up to 200,000 positions. Deals not settled by then were marked undecided.
- Published results. We found no published figure for Flower Garden, so these results are ours alone.
- Error bars. The 43.3% has a 95% range of 41.1% to 45.5%.
- Limits. Over half the deals were undecided, so we can only give a range for the true figure: 43.3% to 94.7%.
The technical side
Flower Garden has its own module, flowergarden.py, written in Python 3.11 with only the standard library. It uses a best-first search that scores each position by the cards not yet home and the cards resting on lower ones, always expands the best position, and remembers every position it has seen so none is searched twice. runner.py spread the deals across processor cores with Python's multiprocessing; the 2,000-deal run took about 24 minutes, because each position allows so many moves. The 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals. An AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, helped us write and review the code and draft this page. All figures come from running the code.
By Admin, solitaire-online.nz. Study date: 19 September 2026.
Short answers before your next deal
Is every bouquet card available?
Yes. Any of the bouquet cards can be played at any time, not just the one at the end.
How many Flower Garden deals can be won?
At least 43.3% in our test, and possibly up to about 95%. Over half were too complex for our search to settle.
Can runs be moved in Flower Garden?
No. In Flower Garden cards move one at a time.
Is Flower Garden good for a long session?
Yes. With everything visible and nothing timed, it suits slow, careful play.
Which games feel like Flower Garden?
FreeCell and Eight Off also show every card from the start. See all the games on the games page.