LEGO® Ideas has become one of my favourite themes. The variety of sets it offers is pretty impressive and that’s perfectly showcased over the last few LEGO Ideas sets. Hot on the heels of sets inspired by classic Disney films and the festively spooky The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Victorian-style ‘hothouse’ Botanical Garden. I must admit when it was revealed that the fan design which inspired this set had been chosen to become a LEGO Ideas release, I wondered why. After all the announcement of it becoming a set occurred not long after the universally loved LEGO Friends Botanical Gardens was released. That remains one of the best Friends sets ever released and could even be considered an elite LEGO set so why do with need another Botanical Garden and will it top the incredible Friends version? There’s only one way to find out, here’s a closer look at the 61st LEGO Ideas set – The Botanical Garden.
Product Details
Set Name: The Botanical Garden | Set Number: 21353 | Pieces: 3792 | Theme: Ideas
Number of Bags: Bags x 26 (paper) + loose elements | Instructions: Paper booklet + Builder App | Stickers: Sheet x 1 | Minifigures: x 12 | Insiders QR: Yes
RRP: £289.99/$329.99/329.99€/499.99AUD/429.99CAD
Availability: LEGO Stores & LEGO Online from November 1st (Insiders) November 4th (General)
As with all LEGO Ideas sets, they are inspired by fan-created designs. It was revealed in December last year that the original Botanical Garden project, created by Goannas89, would become an official set. The original design was a little more compact and used basic elements to craft an array of plants and flowers.
Botanical Gardens have a long history, often traced back to ancient Italy and Greece where they were used to cultivate plants for medicinal purposes. However, the common visual ideal of a Botanical Garden is often associated with the Victorian era. During this time of growth in England, explorers would bring back exotic plants which would need special climates to grow. Hot Houses were created and these soon expanded to become public attractions commonly known as Botanical Gardens. Many of those built back in Victorian times still stand today. To achieve the required climates, the Botanical Gardens would be mainly built from glass.
The Botanical Garden is built across two 32×32 baseplates, giving it double the footprint of most modular buildings. The set is similar to the Modular Buildings Collection sets in terms of scale and how it’s built. So you begin by laying down the set’s interior flooring and outer wall of the building. As the build progresses you add much of the rear section of the glasshouse and you start to ‘plant’ some of the things on show inside. The flowers and plants are mostly found in raised sections around the interior. I will admit these aren’t as impressive as those found in the Friends Botanical Garden set. Those found in this set still use some interesting elements and they look great they are as fun or use wacky pieces like those in the Friends set. The interior isn’t just filled with plants, there is a small till point near the entrance and an ornate stairwell leading to an upper platform found on the building’s rear wall.
As the Botanical Garden has been expanded and is longer than the original fan design, it’s added a pair of smaller rooms to the sides of the buildings. To the right of the building is a small cafe, which features a coffee machine and cakes. It’s impressive there are so many different ways to create a coffee machine with LEGO bricks and this one looks quite fancy, perfectly suited to its setting. Over on the left-hand side of the building is another small room but this one is an expansion of the plant collections and features several cactus plants.
Once most of the interior is in place, you proceed to complete the rest of the exterior sections of the building. Once this is in place, the interior is quite difficult to access. You can only gain access to the main atrium by popping off the roof. Saying that the open back of the Friends Botanical Gardens set was its only downside, so it’s nice that this set is more complete. Access to the two side rooms is a little easier as one of the walls can be popped off. It’s a shame this wasn’t the case with the larger hall as there is a look to see inside, which sort of gets lost once the building is enclosed by the wall. But I can understand why, as the structure is needed to hold up the roof, which is an important part of a Botanical Garden building.
The trade-off for better access to the interior is an amazing roof. Unsurprisingly these use a series of transparent elements to create them. Various clear pieces are framed by white elements to create the top of the Botanical Garden. The roof is split into three sections, two smaller ones top the smaller side rooms and a larger one sits over the main hall of the building. They can all be easily popped off as they are connected by a series of jumper plates.
The roof section is raised enough to allow the Botanical Garden to house two tall trees. These are built separately from the rest of the interior plants. I especially like the tree which combines a stack of gears with the new leaf elements from the Donkey Kong sets, as this is the sort of exotic plants you find in Botanical Gardens. Once built they simply slot into gaps left among the smaller flowers and plants. Another tree can be found outside the building. It’s a little difficult to see exactly how each branch is built due to the angle of the instructions images.
With the main building complete, there are still other details to add around it. The exposed green base becomes the foundation for a colourful spread of blooms. These expand the selection of plants on offer. Similar to those found inside the building, those around it still use traditional elements to create them. There are a couple of newer pieces such as the crown-like flowers and the buds in a variety of colours. The most interesting of the elements used to create one of the plants is the use of a recoloured split banana. These are inverted to become plant leaves.
Although the rear of the building isn’t as spacious as the front, it does feature some nice little details. The area which can be found behind the cafe features a seating area. Over on the other side is a small work area with a leaky hose and a mischievous squirrel. This isn’t the only animal found in the set. There’s a bird nesting in the rafters of the Botanical Garden, a rabbit pottering around the flower beds and even a puppy.
One of the surprising things about the set is the amount of minifigures it features. There are a total of 12 characters found in the set, a vast expansion compared to the fan design. Most of them are fairly generic. Reusing torsos, heads and hair previously used in other sets. The most noticeable ones are the Botanical Garden workers who are all kitted out in aprons. They are joined by two other employees, a tour guide and a staff member from the cafe. Amongst the visitors to the Botanical Garden is a minifigure which looks an awful lot like the sets LEGO designer, Chris McVeigh and a visually impaired minifigure, which isn’t wearing shades as previous characters have. It’s nice to see people with differences appearing in more and more sets. These are not just token inclusions and offer genuinely important ways of showing people with differences.
The Botanical Garden is another impressive LEGO Ideas set. I did question if it could top the similar Friends one and I would say overall it’s a yes. It’s an interesting build and the expanded size offers something different to the Friends set. One thing I enjoyed about the set is all the little details dotted about it. It’s almost a shame you can’t see the interior better. Although there are plenty of different flowers and plants found both inside and out of the Botanical Garden, they just are edged out by an extremely thin margin by those in the impressive Friend set. It’s another costly set but that certainly translates to what the set has to offer. It’s packed with details and has an amazing-looking building and an impressive line-up of minifigures. The LEGO Ideas The Botanical Garden set will be available for Insiders from November 1st, before general release on November 4th. A unique ‘Entrance Gate’ GWP will also be available during launch week.
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This set was provided to BricksFanz by the LEGO Group for this review. The thoughts within this review are those of BricksFanz and do not reflect those of the LEGO Group. Providing a set for free does not guarantee a favourable opinion of the set.
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