12 Animal Crossing New Horizons farm ideas to help you build your 2.0 farm

Animal Crossing New Horizons pumpkin patch in farm
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Here are some Animal Crossing: New Horizons farm ideas to inspire you in building your farm for the new 2.0 update. Cooking, food recipes, and new Animal Crossing: New Horizons farming crops, including potatoes, tomatoes, and wheat, got added with the latest update for New Horizons. To grow the new goods, you’ll likely need to set aside some space on your island for a farm, if you haven’t already got one, or you’ll need to expand your existing one. We’ve gathered a range of stylish, practical, and clever design ideas that you might want to incorporate into your island farm. From custom signs to creative barns, here are 12 design ideas for your Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 farm.

1. Use these crop signpost custom designs as labels

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If you’re making a farm, you’re almost certainly going to want some signpost labels so you know exactly what’s growing and where. You can use these detailed and painterly custom designs of the five new crops and pumpkins courtesy of Twitter user atmos_fierce. His designer code is MA-4927-9249-6264. There are plenty of other custom designs like this available, so have a look at different styles to see which matches your farm, or use them as inspiration to design your own signs.

2. Plant your crops in a 3x3 grid for space and watering efficiency

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Your farm’s layout is really important for both function and fashion. You might want to go for a more realistic crop layout with single file lines of each crop, or you could go with something more practical like a 3x3 square for each crop. If you’ve got a gold watering can, you can water all nine crops contained within a 3x3 square, so it’s a very efficient layout to use in terms of shape and watering. Twitter user maxterashi has 3x3 squares for their farm crops with plenty of space between for other items and furniture.

3. Better define your crop plots with a grass gap custom design

If you want to make one big dirt patch for all your crops, perhaps consider using this grass gap custom design from AlienKnife on Twitter. The design is a strip that perfectly mimics the normal grass texture and has transparent areas on either side, allowing it to blend in with its surroundings. When used on top of a large patch of dirt, it creates the illusion of separate areas, allowing you to avoid having one giant dirt patch. You can download it with the code MO-48C1-P4GC-G3P3.  

4. Trees, flowers, and mushrooms give a wilder look to your farm

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To give your farm a wilder look, you should use trees, flowers, and mushrooms. Placing these in and around your crops will give your farm a more overgrown forest vibe to it. You can enhance the setting with appropriate custom designs to imitate more mushrooms, different grass textures, and rocks can really bring the whole thing together. You could even add the new glowing moss to give your forest farm a more magical vibe with some bioluminescence!

5. Make a spooky pumpkin farm

Although Halloween has just gone, none of your Animal Crossing: New Horizons villagers are going to judge you for keeping things spooky all year round. Instagram user crossing.haley has a pumpkin farm complete with some Halloween pumpkin furniture, a broken fence custom design, and a spooky barn in the background.

6. Make a barn to go with your farm using simple panels

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons doesn’t let you have livestock which, considering there are already cow, pig, and sheep villagers, is probably a good thing. If you did want to have some cows, or at least the illusion of cows, on your island farm, you can use simple panels and a custom design of a cow. With the right furniture surrounding the panels, you’ve for yourself a barn, just like Pipponxo on Twitter. We’ve also seen a variation of this with a red barn and horses instead of cows. Perhaps a pair of reindeer would be appropriate for the winter holidays.

7. Add your own house to your farm and make it a farmhouse

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Depending on the space available on your island, you might have your farm a little out of the way or as a tiny allotment. To make it a bit more extravagant, you could move your own house nearby or rebuild your farm around your house so that your house becomes a farmhouse. Throw in the silo near your house and surround the area with dirt paths to make it look like you live in a busy little vegetable farm.

8. Or build your own farmhouse with stalls and the new pergola

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If you don’t want to move your entire house or surround it with crops, Twitter user dearanipii has created their farmhouse using simple panels, stalls, and the new pergola item that can be purchased for Nook Miles. There’s even a small interior space, but you could also use a panel to create a door and use the improvised barn as a decorative piece to liven up your crop farm.

9. You can customize fences now to add more colors

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The 2.0 update added new Animal Crossing: New Horizons fencing options for you to try out. There are several new fence types, including park fencing, green bamboo fencing, and log-wall fencing that you could use for your farm. You can also purchase the ‘Custom Fencing in a Flash’ upgrade for 2,500 Nook Miles to gain access to customizable fencing. With this upgrade you can change the colors of your existing fences, like the purple simple wooden fence seen here. You could mix and match colours and fence types to effectively color code your farm.

10. Combine new Nook Miles items to create floral pathways

There are lots of new Nook Miles furniture items available now that the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 update is out, and you can use some of it create floral pathways in and around your farm. You can get topiaries, flower beds, and pergolas for your island, and combining them all will allow you to create some elaborate garden displays. You could use the pergola as a flowery tunnel leading to and from your farm, or as a junction point in the center of your farm that leads to the different crops, with flower beds and topiaries lining paths to make them clearer.

11. Use the new windmill for a western ranch farm

my_island_is_called_windmill_and_im_super_stocked from r/AnimalCrossing

Reddit user Laineyyz has created an American ranch-style farm that uses several of the new Nook Miles windmill item. Paired with lots of other furniture, the windmills make the farm look busy and active too. Since the windmills are quite small, Laineyyz has also used a popular perspective trick where objects are placed on varying levels and far away to make it look like the objects are at a more accurate scale.

12. Farm for Gyroids instead

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If for whatever reason the new food items and cooking just aren’t your thing, maybe you could try making a Gyroid farm. While you can’t technically ‘farm’ Animal Crossing: New Horizons Gyroids in the same way you can with food, setting up a little farm-like area to accommodate buried Gyroids and fragments ready for watering might be a nice idea. Twitter user AnaisElysium has a small area dedicated to burying Gyroids in the ground which can be accessed with the new fixed ladders. Water several at once, and the next day you’ll have some new fully formed Gyroids to dig up.

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Will Sawyer
Guides Writer

Will Sawyer is a guides writer at GamesRadar+ who works with the rest of the guides team to give readers great information and advice on the best items, how to complete a particular challenge, or where to go in some of the biggest video games. Will joined the GameRadar+ team in August 2021 and has written about service titles, including Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Warzone, as well as some of the biggest releases like Halo Infinite, Elden Ring, and God of War Ragnarok.