Since the pre-Seasons patch in 2018 (version 1.44.77.1020 PC), the Evolve interaction for plants was made immediate, as said in the patch notes below:
Gardening Evolution has been streamlined to ...
Ideas
There's no tags in replies. Just stating is fine :D
Were the not able to evolve at all before the bug fix and now it's just the instant that doesn't work ?
Count me in: vertical planters do require a Sim to walk to it and perform an animation in order to evolve any plant. Since I started playing The Sims 4 on February 2020 and got Eco Living months later, I didn’t know it worked that way for all plants, so I thought it was a quirk of the vertical planters.
Evolving plants on the ground or horizontal planters is instantaneous, I can do it while a Sim is literally sleeping, but vertical planters queue the action and the plant only evolves after the whole animation is performed.