No, and the game will not let you try. Any placement that would cut every route from a gate to your crown is refused before it happens, so you can never trap yourself or the pests. Closing a shortcut is allowed and encouraged — that is the whole game — but one way through always stays open.

Flowers only bloom on a hedge. That is the trade the game is built on: hedges lengthen the walk but do not shoot, flowers shoot but need a hedge underneath them. If flowers could go anywhere they would double as walls and the routing decision would disappear, which is exactly what happened in testing before the rule was added.

Both, and neither works alone. A long route with no flowers just delays the pests, and flowers on a short route do not get enough time on target. Measured with identical firepower, a twenty-four tile route folds on wave two while a seventy-four tile route carries the run to the end of the campaign.

You cannot out-maze either of them, and that is deliberate. The mole tunnels under your hedges for a few seconds at a time and the wasp ignores the ground completely, so both walk a straight line at your crown. The answer is coverage near the crown itself rather than more corridor — keep a couple of long-range flowers close to home instead of spending everything at the gate.

The campaign is twelve waves and can be finished. After that an endless mode keeps the garden running with a widening pest mix and rising pressure, and your best wave is saved between visits.