The core strategy of Primrows comes from pattern matching. There are four basic patterns that let you place four of the same flower without any two being in the same row, column, or quadrant, and if you want to aim for high scores, you’ll want to get familiar with them. We’ve given them nicknames to help you recognize them.

The Pinwheel:

The Bolt:

The Mountain:

The Corner:

If you’re trying for the elusive Prize Garden, figure out the ways that these patterns can link together with each other. There are several ways to do this—don’t forget that you can flip and rotate these patterns, too. Here’s an example that uses one pinwheel, one bolt, and two (sideways) mountains:

Making Your Own Luck

Once you’ve got a grasp on the patterns, you can use them to make decisions about the chance elements of the game. Let’s look at an example from Journal Play. You’ve just watered your garden, and you’ve grown these flowers:

There are two basic strategies you can take here. The most obvious one is to look at the three happy one-petal blue flowers and try to complete the pinwheel pattern, pruning like so:

And if you’re down to your last water, this is the smartest move you can make. Even though your odds of getting a fourth blue flower are a bit of a long-shot, you’re guaranteed at least 30 points because you’re not doing anything to risk those happy blue flowers.

However… if you have two water left, there’s a better move on the board: trimming away three of those sleeping four-petal orange flowers to reveal the already-complete corner pattern.

It’s a bigger risk, because you aren’t guaranteed any points this way. But if you sit down and crunch the numbers, then—as long as you’re not on your last water—this is going to be the higher-scoring strategy in the long run.

There are, of course, endless wrinkles to the specifics of the strategy, especially in a situation where there aren’t just two clear options to pick from. Trying to calculate the perfect strategy for any given garden quickly becomes a headache, but you can get a pretty high score relying on vibes. Just remember, trying to complete a partial pattern is the safe-and-steady option, and trying to trim away extra flowers from a complete pattern is the high-risk/high-reward option.