Have you ever listened in to Gardeners Question Time and been baffled by the fact that so many green-fingered experts like to refer toĀ plants by their Latin names?
Well, if like me, you tend to call flowers by their more conventional names, you’ll find lots to enjoy in the exciting and cleverly-designed In Bloom slot from IGT, available to play right now at the ever popular Bet365 Games site.
This slot is a horticultural delight, as well as being an enjoyable 5×3 reel slot with some innovative features that offers the player a chance to win up to 1,000 times their stake, all from as little as Ā£0.50 per spin, up to a maximum bet of Ā£100 per spin.
The game also boasts a number of exciting bonus features, some of which you will have rarely seen on other slot games, and which help In Bloom have appeal to a wide range of slots players of all ages and experience.
Let’s take a closer look at the key details of this popular slot.
Key Information
The first thing to note is that this slot boasts 40 paylines, but you do have to pay a 25% premium to activate all the features in the game, so if you wager Ā£0.01 per payline, you would pay Ā£0.40 ordinarily to get the reels spinning, however with in bloom, this rises to Ā£0.50.
However, that premium is worth it when you see the long term value of the features that the additional cash unlocks, specifically the Symbol Burst feature, which we will explain in more detail a little later in the review.
First off, the In Bloom slot has some key things to note. Although this looks like a 5×3 reel slot and plays like it with the same paylines, in fact what you have are 15 individual reels organised into a 5×3 reel matrix. You can see this when you hit spin as the reels spin differently on these 15 reel games to a standard 5 reel slot.
On each of the reels are a number of symbols. The low value symbols are the playing card lows and the higher value symbols are the different flowers, of which there are four. Water Lilies, Cala Lilies, a beautiful yellow Rose and a deep red Poppy.
On low symbol wins, nothing happens, but if you hit a win on any of the 40 paylines using the four flower symbols, then the Symbol Burst feature kicks into life. What happens here is that the single flower on a reel can burst into bud, creating up to five flowers on a single reel. Each symbol will burst into 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 flowers and it is the number of flowers that you get on a spin, that determines the value of your cash prize. The more flowers you hit on a winning payline, the greater the prize.
The maximum number of flowers you can get from Symbol Burst depends on the “reel” on which the symbol has landed. You can land one or two flowers on all reels, three flowers can appear on reels 2, 3 and 4 while you can get the four or five flower blooms only on the middle reel.
The other key bonus in the game is the Garden Bonus which is triggered when you land two or more of the Butterfly symbols on the middle reel (the Scatter symbol only appears on the middle reel in this slot). Ā If you land just one butterfly symbol, you can trigger the bonus if another butterfly flutters down from the top of the screen and turns a symbol on the middle reel to another scatter.
When you land this feature your first task is to pick from one of the four flowers on the reels, each has a number of associated free spins ascribed to it. The flower you select will be the only one that appears on the reel during free spins, hence the higher value flower offers a smaller number of free spins.
What then happens is that you play through your free spins and then when the free spins have completed and you have won a set amount of cash, you then pick from a selection of symbols to reveal a multiplier of between 1x and 50x, which is then applied to your win.
With a RTP of between 92.05 and 96%, this is definitely a medium variance slot, which means that you need to budget well in order to enjoy the best the slot has to offer.
How to win playingĀ the In Bloom Slot
It is fair to say that the rewards in the base game of the In Bloom slot are not huge and so if you are going to hit something akin to a bigger value win, certainly on part with the 1000x jackpot 
available in the base game, then you need to ensure that you trigger the key features of the slot as often as possible.
The Symbol Burst feature offers the best option in the base game with higher value wins on the higher and mid value flowers providing some useful wins to accompany the lower value wins you receive from hitting the lower value symbols, or a small number of flowers on a winning spin. These bigger value wins don’t come along too often however, so sensible budgeting to ensure your bankroll will last is key to getting the best from the slot.
In doing that, you also get a chance to accessĀ what has the potential to be a very lucrative feature of the slot, the Garden Bonus. Key here is selecting the right flower allied to the number of free spins and personally, I’d pick the two middle flowers with the middle number of spins as my choice, rather than opting for the lower value flower with more spins, or the higher value flower with just five spins.
Following the free spins, getting lucky with the Multiplier bonus is key. What you tend to find is that lower value cumulative wins in the free spins round will trigger larger multiplier bonuses, while if you win big in the free spins section, your multiplier will tend to be lower. However, on rare occasions you can hit the jackpot and win big in the free spins round and then land a whopping multiplier to really ramp up the win value.
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