In Botanicus, you are creating your own botanical garden. Hire a gardener and then set out to find the most beautiful plants in the world. But don’t plant them just anywhere! Your visitors have high standards and very specific expectations of what they’d like to see.

Will your garden outshine all the others?

About this rulebook

We recommend that you take your time to read this rulebook, then set up the game, and only then start explaining the game to your fellow players. The rules are written as you would explain them to others.

Examples and special cases are written in italics. You can ignore special cases for now; they are only intended to answer specific questions.

We use the word Important to indicate particularly important rules. If in doubt, check these first!

Botanicus includes a base game and an Expert variant .

Once you’ve played the base game a few times, you can consult the Expert Rules sheet for an extra challenge.

Enjoy your garden!