Rows Gardens are another brainchild of Patrick Berry. They’re one of my favorite variety puzzle formats. A thousand thanks to the folks at Amuse Labs, who created the solvable, embedded version of the puzzle below. If you prefer, you can download and print the pdf(s). Instructions for how to complete a rows garden appear are presented below.

Answers fit into the puzzle in two ways. Row answers read horizontally from the lettered markers; each row contains two consecutive answers reading left to right (except Rows A and L, which contain one answer reading across the nine protruding spaces). Blooms are six-letter answers that fill the shaded and unshaded hexagons, reading either clockwise or counterclockwise. Bloom clues are divided into three lists: Light, Medium and Dark. Answers to Light clues go in hexagons with white centers; Medium answers go in the hexagons with gray centers; and Dark answers go in hexagons with black centers.

In the regular version, all three Bloom lists are in the order in which they appear in the garden. In the thorny version, the Bloom lists are in random order, so you need to use the row answers to figure out where to plant each bloom.