Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) Guides

Bush Types & Colors List + Blooming Season Dates

Bushes, or Shrubs, are a fantastic landscaping option for decorating your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH)! Learn how to get bushes, see every bush type and color, and a few tips on where you can plant them.

While fences, trees, and flowers are a great way to get started with designing your island in New Horizons, bushes bring a whole new level of options to island landscaping! They’re perfect for lining your paths and be placed in some locations that trees typically won’t survive.

How To Get Bushes

You can purchase new bush starts from Leif’s Flower Shop in Animal Crossing: New Horizons either while he’s visiting your island outside Resident Services or at his shop within Harvey’s Shopping Plaza when built. His on-island appearances are quite random and you can’t control anything about Leif’s frequency or when he will appear.

Another way to get Bushes are from taking Kapp’n Mystery Island boat tours where they can sometimes be found and taken home by digging them up using a Shovel.

When you find Leif on your home island or at Harvey’s Island, he’ll always be selling two different types of bushes at a time, and both available colors for those bush types. From our experience, one of the bush types Leif sells will always be the current ‘in season’ blooming bush. The other bush type he carries is randomly selected.

Every bush costs 280 Bells each to purchase a ‘start’ from Leif, or 1400 Bells to buy a bulk pack of 5 bush starts. You can purchase bushes from Leif when visiting other islands too for a potentially different selection.

Bush Types and Colors List

There are 13 different bushes or shrubs you can grow in total for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, comprising 7 unique types with color variants for most bushes. We have photo icons for every type of bush below in each color.

Plumeria Bushes: Pink & White

The Plumeria Bushes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons have Pink and White color variants costing 280 Bells each from Leif’s Flower Shop, and were introduced in the Version 2.0 Update. You can find them on Kapp’n Mystery Islands as well.

They bloom June 1st to September 20th in the Northern Hemisphere, and December 1st to March 20th in the Southern Hemisphere.

Azalea Bushes: Pink & White

The Azalea Bushes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons have Pink and White color variants costing 280 Bells each from Leif’s Flower Shop. They bloom April 11th to May 31st in the Northern Hemisphere, and October 11th to November 30th in the Southern Hemisphere.

Camellia Bushes: Pink & Red

The Camellia Bushes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons have Pink and Red color variants costing 280 Bells each from Leif’s Flower Shop. They bloom January 1st to March 31st in the Northern Hemisphere, and June 16th to September 30th in the Southern Hemisphere.

Notably, there is a short period following the Camellia Bushes where there are no bushes of any type in blooming seasons. This takes place during the Cherry Blossom season from April 1st to 10th in the Northern Hemisphere, and October 1st to 10th in the Southern Hemisphere.

Hibiscus Bushes: Red & Yellow

The Hibiscus Bushes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons have Red and Yellow color variants costing 280 Bells each from Leif’s Flower Shop. They bloom July 21st to September 20th in the Northern Hemisphere, and January 21st to March 20th in the Southern Hemisphere.

Holly Bush

The Holly Bush in Animal Crossing: New Horizons has only one version costing 280 Bells each from Leif’s Flower Shop. They bloom November 1st to December 31st in the Northern Hemisphere, and May 1st to June 15th in the Southern Hemisphere.

Hydrangea Bushes: Blue & Pink

The Hydrangea Bushes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons have Blue and Pink color variants costing 280 Bells each from Leif’s Flower Shop. They bloom June 1st to July 20th in the Northern Hemisphere, and December 1st to January 20th in the Southern Hemisphere.

Tea Olive Bushes: Orange & Yellow

The Tea Olive Bushes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons have Orange and Yellow color variants costing 280 Bells each from Leif’s Flower Shop. They bloom September 21st to October 31st in the Northern Hemisphere, and March 21st to April 30th in the Southern Hemisphere.

These bushes were previously known as Sweet Olives in Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Bush Blooming Seasons & Dates

Like in past Animal Crossing games, each bush type has a unique blooming season where the bushes of that kind will sprout beautiful flowers or other decorations. During other times of the year when the bush is not blooming, it will simply display the basic leaves for that type of bush.

Furthermore, the current blooming in season bush type seems to affect the selection of new bushes that Leif will sell at his Flower Shop when visiting your island. He’s always guaranteed to sell whichever bush type is currently in season!

Note that bush buds will always appear first for one day with the full blooming visuals appearing the next day after. If you time travel into a blooming period, the buds will still appear for one day first, even if it’s not the first day of the season.

Bush Season Dates for Northern Hemisphere

For the complete season blooming date ranges for all bush types in the Northern Hemisphere, check out the table below charting when each bush will be in bloom on your island:

Bush Type	Season Dates
Camellia Bushes	January 1st to March 31st
Azalea Bushes	April 11th to May 31st
Hydrangea Bushes	June 1st to July 20th
Plumeria Bushes	June 1st to September 20th
Hibiscus Bushes	July 21st to September 20th
Tea Olive Bushes	September 21st to October 31st
Holly Bush	November 1st to December 31st

Bush Season Dates for Southern Hemisphere

For the complete season blooming date ranges for all bush types in the Southern Hemisphere, check out the table below charting when each bush will be in bloom on your island:

Bush Type	Season Dates
Hydrangea Bushes	December 1st to January 20th
Plumeria Bushes	December 1st to March 20th
Hibiscus Bushes	January 21st to March 20th
Tea Olive Bushes	March 21st to April 30th
Holly Bush	May 1st to June 15th
Camellia Bushes	June 16th to September 30th
Azalea Bushes	October 11th to November 30th

How To Plant Bushes On Your Island

Planting bushes on your island couldn’t be any easier! To plant a bush, just open your inventory and select the Plant option when pressing on a bush start that you’ve purchased from Leif. It works exactly the same as planting flower seeds.

If you want more control over your bush planting to get precise placements and eliminate the possibility for mistakes, you can use a shovel to dig a hole and directly bury the bush start into the hole. And by the way, you can easily move bushes simply by digging them up and re-planting. This applies even when the bush is in its smallest and least grown size!

Plus, if you’re not sure exactly where you want to place your new bushes, you can easily plant them in an unused corner somewhere on your island as a holding spot and simply move them later into the ideal locations after they’re fully grown.

Where Can Bushes Grow? Rules For Planting Bushes

If you played Animal Crossing: New Leaf on Nintendo 3DS, you’re no doubt familiar with the many restrictions bushes had in regard to places they could actually grow without dying. Good news though — the restrictions for bush planting appear to have been heavily relaxed!

Here’s a few examples below of situations where we can confirm bushes can be planted. A huge thanks goes to Mayor Brewster on Tumblr who performed these tests and took the screenshots seen below!

Bushes Can Be Planted Next To Rivers & Cliff Edges

Bushes Can Be Planted Between Houses and Trees

Bushes Can Be Planted Next To Inclines & Ramps

Bushes Can Be Planted Next To Beach Edges

Bushes Can Be Planted Next To Cliff Walls

We hope that this all helps you out with where you can plant bushes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons without having your starts wither away to death! Let us know in the comments below if you learn anything more about the rules of bush planting, especially if you encounter one that won’t grow.

Special thanks to Mogyay for researching and contributing information on the bloom dates of each bush type.