Flower garden solitaire is a favourite amongst connoisseurs of varieties of patience and solitaire card games. It is one of a large number of lesser known but nevertheless very diverting and entertaining solitaire card games. A little patience in learning it will pay dividends.

As with all solitaire card games it can be played by one person.

Other unusual forms of solitaire patience include Sir Tommy; Tower of Hanoy and Vertical Patience.

More common forms of solitaire are Clock Patience and Demon.

To begin playing you first need to create the 'Flower Garden' and the 'Bouquet'.

First deal six groups of six cards face upwards to create the Flower Garden - each group of six is a 'Flower Bed'.

You can only use the top or exposed card from each group, but arrange the cards of each flower bed into a fan shape so you can see what cards are in each group.

The remaining sixteen cards which have not formed Flower Beds in the Flower Garden are your Bouquet - i.e. your stock of cards.  Any card can be selected for use from your Bouquet.  you are not restricted to the top card only as with most other forms of patience and solitaire.

Now start playing by removing any Aces from the Bouquet or from the top exposed cards of the Flower Beds.  With these Aces form a row of Foundation heaps which you must build up in sequence for each suit from Ace up to King.

If you hold in the Bouquet or in any of the exposed cards in the Flower Brds any card that can be used in sequence on an Ace heap, then play it immediately, and you can then use the newly exposed card if that can be similarly played.

When you haev gone as far as you can in this way, you need to expose fresh cards.  this is done as follows:

1. You are allowed to move any top card form any Flower Bed and place it on top of the exposed card of any other Flower Bed with which it forms a descending sequence irrespective of suits. You can move more than one card at a time provided they are in sequence and that the bottom card removed forms the proper sequence when it is moved.
2. For example - You could not move a 9 onto a Queen as a single card.  However, if below the 9 there was a 10 of any suit and below the 10 there was a Jack, you could remove all three cards at once and place them in correct sequence on top of the Queen.
3. Bear in mind that any card in the Bouquet can be added to the top cards of any Flower Bed in order to form a small group for removal. In the above example, if the Jack was covered by the 9, but you had a 10 in the Bouquet, you could add the 10 from the Bouquet to the Flower Bed in the correct sequence and then move the three cards onto the Queen.

It is in the groupings of cards that the real skill of this form of solitaire patience can be shown, because you can remove any number of essential cards from the Bouquet. You coudldfor instance in the above example add a 7 and 8 from the Bouquet above the 9 that was already exposed. In so doing you now have five cards which can be moved on top of the Queen.

However, amongst all the thought surrounding these groupings the main objective is to build up the Foundation piles from the Aces up to Kings. Grouping as described above helps this to happen, as it enables you to get the cards into sequence in the Flower Beds ready to move onto the Foundations.

If by any chance you should remove all of the cards from a Flower Bed the space can be filled by the removal of one card or a sequence of cards form any other flower bed. In this way you can expose valuable cards which are hidden or trapped lower down in another Flower Bed.

Good luck and happy gardening!