Flower Garden: a reserve you can pick from freely
Here is the opposite of a three-card draw. In Solitaire Turn 3 the stock gives you cards three at a time and lets you play only the top one, so a card you need can hide in the middle of a group for lap after lap. Flower Garden also has a reserve, the 16-card bouquet, but every card in it is face up and any of them may be played at any time. There is no stock to turn and no order to wait for.
That freedom does not make the game easy, and our figures show why. A solver that sees every card solved 43.30% of 2,000 deals (95% range 41.14%–45.48%), proved 5.35% impossible (4.45%–6.42%) and could not settle 51.35% (49.16%–53.54%) within its budget. The honest answer: somewhere between 43.3% and 94.7% of deals can be won. With no draw to go against you, the deal and your planning decide it.
At a glance: Flower Garden on this site
| Measure | Result | 95% range | Deals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solved | 43.30% | 41.14–45.48% | 2,000 |
| Proven impossible | 5.35% | 4.45–6.42% | 2,000 |
| Undecided within the budget | 51.35% | 49.16–53.54% | 2,000 |
| Aces that start in the bouquet (of 4) | 1.26 Aces | 1.23–1.30 | 2,000 |
| Solved when 2+ Aces start in the bouquet | 44.18% | 40.65–47.76% | 747 |
| Solved when 0–1 Aces start in the bouquet | 42.78% | 40.06–45.53% | 1,253 |
With half the deals undecided, the range is wide. Undecided means the search ran out of room, not that the deal is lost. Flower Garden is not covered by the published study of Blake and Gent (2026), so there is no outside figure to compare with.
Does it matter where the Aces start?
In Klondike Turn 3 on this site, buried Aces cost something: our bot won 12.29% of deals with no Ace face down (10.55%–14.27%, 1,196 deals) against 10.14% with two or more face down (9.36%–10.98%, 5,333 deals). In Flower Garden, Aces in the bouquet are free to play, so you might expect a big boost when more of them start there. We did not find one: 44.18% solved with 2+ Aces in the bouquet against 42.78% with 0–1, and the two ranges overlap. When every reserve card is playable, how the reserve is arranged matters far less than what you build on the table.
Flower Garden rules on this site
- Deal: six columns of six cards, face up (the "garden").
- Bouquet: the other 16 cards, face up; any of them may be played.
- Building: down in any suit, one card at a time.
- Empty columns: any card may fill them.
- Foundations: up by suit from Ace to King.
- No stock: nothing to draw, turn or redeal.
Playing Flower Garden
Don't empty the bouquet too fast
Every bouquet card is a card you can reach any time. Play from it when it helps, not just because you can.
Single-card moves change the math
You can only move one card at a time, so long runs are hard to shift. Build where the run can stay.
Empty a column early
An empty column takes any card and is your best tool for untangling a stacked column.
Aim for the low cards
Aces and 2s buried at the top of a column are the real obstacle. Plan how to dig them out before you build over them.
Use Undo to explore
With so many deals undecided, a stuck game often has a line you have not seen. Back up and try another.
Think of the bouquet as open cells
Sixteen playable reserve cards work a little like sixteen filled free cells. Emptying them is progress, but only if each card you play lands somewhere it can stay. A card dropped onto the wrong column can block the very Ace or 2 you were trying to reach, and with single-card moves it is slow to shift again.
Turn 1, Turn 3 or no draw at all
For reference, here is what the draw rule does in Klondike on this site. Our simple bot, which sees only face-up cards and never undoes, won 42.3% of 10,000 Turn 1 deals (41.3%–43.3%) and 10.6% of 10,000 Turn 3 deals (10.0%–11.2%). In the games it did win, it went through the stock 2.34 times at Turn 1 and 3.81 times at Turn 3. Flower Garden has no laps at all: the bouquet is fully open from the start. We did not run a bot on Flower Garden, so we cannot say how a no-planning player does here, only what the solver found.
Without a stock, the chance a deal gives you is fixed the moment the cards land. Nothing you turn later can help or hurt, so every decision you make on the table counts for more.
Playing on solitaire-turn-3.com
Flower Garden is free in any current browser on computer, tablet or phone, with no account. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are included, along with zoom, fullscreen, drag or tap moves, a counter for wins, time and moves, and sound and table-color settings. If you want a reserve that fights back, try the three-card stock in Klondike Turn 3.
How the figures were made
The solitaire-turn-3.com team ran these tests in September 2026 on this site's rules, in Python 3.11 with the standard library only.
- Rules from the code: as listed above, read from this site's game code.
- Numbered deals: seeds 1 to 2,000.
- Best-first solver that sees every card, with safe automatic moves, up to 200,000 positions per deal.
- Three outcomes: solved, proven impossible or undecided.
- No published check: Flower Garden does not appear in Blake and Gent (2026).
- 95% ranges: Wilson score intervals for shares, normal intervals for averages.
Claude, an AI assistant by Anthropic, helped write and review the code and draft this page. Every figure comes from running the code, and the team checked them.
Flower Garden questions
How often can I win?
We can only give a range: at least 43.3% and at most 94.7% of deals, from 2,000 tested.
Is the bouquet like a stock?
Only in that it holds reserve cards. Unlike a stock, all of it is visible and playable, so there is no Turn 1 or Turn 3.
What else is similar?
Simple Simon is another all-face-up game. All games are on the games page; articles are on the blog.
By Admin, solitaire-turn-3.com (Forty Media). Research run September 2026.