On 1 November 2024, LEGO is releasing the next fan-inspired LEGO® Ideas set: The Botanical Garden! This set is based on a fan design by Valentina Bima (Goannas89), which reached the required 10,000 supporter milestone back on 9 January 2023, and was announced as a future set in the results of the First 2023 Review last December.
21353 The Botanical Garden will undoubtedly appeal to a lot of builders not only for its stately display presence and detailed construction, but also for its outstanding variety of useful plant-building elements. Without further ado, let’s put on our gardening gloves and dig in!
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21353 The Botanical Garden
- Price: US$329.99/ £289.99/ DE€329.99/ AU$499.99/ CA$429.99/ 2799 CNY/ 135990 HUF/ 7999 MXN
- Pieces: 3,972
- Dimensions: W: 51cm, L: 25cm, H: 22cm
- Age mark: 18+
- Release date: 1 November 2024 for LEGO Insiders, 4 November for all
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Gift with Purchase set 5009005 Entrance Gate
View the Entrance Gate GwP on LEGO.com
- Price: free with purchase of set 21353 The Botanical Garden by LEGO Insiders only, membership required, all stores and online.
- Age mark: 10+
- Pieces: 152
- Dimensions: 3.5 in (9 cm) high, 4.5 in. (12 cm) wide and 3.5 in. (9 cm) deep
- Release date: 1 – 7 November 2024 while supplies last.
It's wonderful to see how many more of the new flower moulds and printed four leaf clover tile you get with this, along with another gardener minifigure, plus a blue bird and a butterfly!
Official description from The LEGO Group:
"Nature-lovers will have lots of fun building the botanical garden entrance gate, which features vibrant flowers, leaves and a butterfly, before enjoying imaginative role play with the gardener minifigure that comes with the set. A thoughtful nature gift for girls, boys and flower fans, this LEGO set becomes gorgeous floral home decor that can be displayed proudly once it’s complete."
Now to the set itself!
Minifigures
Some of those figures have special significance: the manager, featuring a new printed torso with a dark blue down waistcoat over a sand green pullover, is based on fan designer Valentina Bima, and a particular bearded, camera-toting visitor appears to represent senior model designer Chris McVeigh, who adapted Valentina’s submission into this finished product!
Also of note, one visitor is visually impaired, carrying a cane made from a white Harry Potter wand element (6270029 | 36752), and introducing a new double-sided head print with closed eyes on both sides. One of the two expressions has a peaceful closed-mouth smile, as if savoring the pleasant aroma of the flowers and the singing of the birds, while the other side has a toothy, jovial grin.
As designer Chris McVeigh explained to us at Fan Media Days in Denmark in September:
“We've had visually impaired characters before, but we wanted to create an element specific for that character. This is a double-sided face that I think is very good for representation as well, to make sure that we are inviting all people into the Botanical Gardens.”
The gardeners also feature new torso assemblies for their work uniforms, featuring sand green button-down shirts with medium nougat bib-and-brace overalls – a nice earthy colour scheme which could very easily be repurposed either for casual outdoor wear, or work clothes for other outdoorsy jobs such as farmers, park workers, or landscapers.
It's not just humans visiting the Botanical Garden: The set also contains four birds, as well as a dog, a frog, a beetle, a bunny, and a squirrel.
The model
The Botanical Garden is built on two bright green 32x32 baseplates (6097276 | 3811), making it 16 studs wider than Valentina’s original submission.
The main structure features Victorian-inspired architecture with a white, tan, and sand green colour scheme, and is made up of three atriums: a main hall with a spiral staircase leading to an upstairs observation deck, an arid garden wing housing a variety of cacti, and a café wing featuring coffee, assorted baked goods, and a door to an outdoor dining area.
The sand green was a long discussion. We tried many other colours. In the end, what we decided was that the sand green really helped colour-code this as a botanical garden, and the other ones didn't feel as organic.
– Chris McVeigh, senior product designer
The roofs of the three atriums, the front wall of the café wing, the back wall of the arid garden wing, and the two large trees in the main hall can each be detached from the model so you can easily access or view all the interior areas of the model.
The model does not adhere to the same standards as the Modular Buildings Collection (for example, it has no street-facing front pavement, lampposts, or Technic pin connections along the sides of the base), as the design team wanted to devote as much exterior space to plants as possible. Nevertheless, I expect many collectors of that series will find ways to incorporate it into their modular streets or towns!
New molds
Unusually for a LEGO Ideas set, the design team was able to introduce four new molds for this set, which add to the floral detail and make the Victorian glass roof construction possible.
However, one of these molds, the Peony/Rose (5904), has already become available in several sets released earlier this month. Thus far it has appeared in red in 21352 Magic of Disney, dark pink and trans-yellow in the LEGO® Wicked theme, and black in the LEGO® Wednesday theme. We also caught a sneak peek of it in medium lavender in 77053 Stargazing with Celeste, one of the LEGO® Animal Crossing™ sets which will be released in January 2025.
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| Image ©2024 New Elementary |
In total, the new molds in this set are, above from left to right:
- Plant, Flower, Tulip with Bar in Yellow and Bright Pink
- Plant, Flower, Peony Rose with 2 Layers in Red (6512571 | 5904), Dark Pink (6550578 | 5904), Orange, Green, and Medium Lavender
- 24x Brick, Arch 1 x 5 x 3⅓ Curved Top in White
- 12x Panel 5 x 5 x 3⅓ Curved Top Corner in Trans-Clear
The new corner panel is clearly designed to match this year’s new Panel 6 x 5 x 3⅓ Curved Top, 16 of which appear in this set in trans-clear (6513899 | 5065).
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| Images ©2020, 2024 New Elementary |
The new white arch looks even more familiar: its proportions are identical to the existing Brick Arch 1 x 6 x 3 1/3 Curved Top (30935, above left), save for the shorter 1x1 plate connection at the top. Whether it will be fully replacing its elongated predecessor remains to be seen, but this slightly more compact design may make it the more versatile of the two versions.
In order to make the roof structure work like this, we also needed another element for the roof that allows us to resolve the corners, so that we could do this without any collisions or having any need for overlap.
– Chris McVeigh, senior product designer
The tulip is a very useful flower shape which I’m sure we will be seeing again in themes such as LEGO® Friends and LEGO Animal Crossing, but I can also picture various non-botanical uses for it – perhaps as the jaws of an alien worm, a crown for a fantasy ruler, a tuft of feathers on a brick-built bird, or decorative finials on an architectural or furniture build.
The peony likewise shows a lot of promise for a wide variety of uses, especially if it continues to appear in new colours. Besides flowers and cacti, its elaborate texture could also make it a useful new option for building pinecones, fruits like pineapples and pitayas, vegetables like lettuce and artichokes, or scaly body textures on brick-built creatures like fish or dragons.
Recolours and new prints
Besides the latter three peony/rose colours, we spotted a couple of other interesting recolours making their debut here:
The banana peel recolour seems like it will be very useful for plant builds in sets and MOCs, whether minifigure-scale like this set or closer to life-size like those from the LEGO® Botanical Collection. The door frame element also expands the utility of the various other window/door frames in this part family which already appear in sand green (including several appearing in this very set).
Let us know if you spot any other recoloured elements that we missed!
While the botanical garden set uses stickers for some of its details (such as the signs for the two wings and the computer monitors at the café counter and reception desk), we also managed to spot two new printed tiles that may be of interest to AFOLs.
At least six exhibits are marked with a 1 x 1 tile in Tan with an informational plaque print. Outside the building, some 1 x 1 round tiles in Bright Green with four-leaf clover prints are nestled alongside the paved walkway.
Rare parts
One part that is not new but still immediately caught my attention is the dark tan sparrow (6483284), which has previously only appeared in 71047 LEGO® Minifigures Dungeons & Dragons®. It’s a relief to know that such a useful printed animal is not IP-locked, and thus designers are free to include it in other sets and themes!
Some other animal parts making welcome return appearances in this set include:
- Tile Round 1 x 1 with Beetle print in Trans-Clear (6490892) - previously only in two 2024 LEGO Friends sets
- Animal, Dog, Small (Puppy), Alsatian / German Shepherd (Police Dog) with Black Eyes and Dark Brown Muzzle Print in Medium Nougat (6419079 | 101352) - previously only in two 2023 LEGO® City sets
- Animal, Bird, Small with Orange Beak, Black Eyes Print in Bright Light Yellow (6465604 | 105834) - previously only in three 2024 sets
A number of other rare and recent elements are used for the exhibits themselves. Here are some we spotted that have each only appeared in one previous set:
- 16x Leaf 2 x 6 x 1 with 2 Studs in Olive Green (6495168 | 3565) - only in 10340 Wreath from earlier this month; read Tom's review of the LEGO Wreath
- 1x Technic Ball Joint in Yellowish Green (6495163 | 32474) - also only in 10340 Wreath
- 3x Weapon Hilt Symmetric in Bright Green (6468078 | 66909) - only in 10329 Tiny Plants; read Thomas' review of LEGO Tiny Plants
- 2x Equipment Broom End in Lime (6514489 | 90826) - also only in 10329 Tiny Plants
- 3x Headwear Accessory Crown Long with Bar in Bright Light Yellow (6510517 | 25516) - only in 10369 Plum Blossom; read Eero's review of LEGO Plum Blossom
- 2x Light Cover with Internal Bar / Bionicle Barraki Eye with Hole in Bar (6484410 | 4278) - only in 76434 Aragog in the Forbidden Forest
- 1x Brick Round 1.5 x 1.5 Dome Top in Bright Light Orange (6504671 | 20952, 37840) - only in 77092 Great Deku Tree 2-in-1; read Thomas' review of the LEGO Deku Tree
- 1x Headwear Accessory Vintage Sci-Fi Antenna in Dark Pink (6501644 | 5525) - only in 75581 The Minions’ Party Bus
We also spotted these parts which have appeared in only two previous sets each:
- over 30x Plant, Stem with 3 Leaves and Bottom Pin in Dark Red (6438776 | 37695)
- 4x Plant, Sea Grass in Dark Tan (6401022 | 30093)
- 2x Weapon Hilt Symmetric in Sand Green (6474604 | 66909)
- 2x Crown / Flower / Egg Shell Half in Bright Green (6420228 | 39262)
- 1x Plant, Pumpkin in Bright Green (6492253 | 51270)
- 1x Gate 1 x 4 x 9 Arched with Bars and Three Studs in Reddish Brown (6437959 | 42448)
Let us know if any other rare or useful parts caught your eye!
LEGO plant species included
The expansive gardens gave Chris plenty of space inside and out to incorporate a host of different plant and fungus species – over 35 in all! To get as much variety of plant builds as possible, a number of designers came together for creative boosts: multi-day group sessions where designers brainstorm by free-building various concepts based on a particular prompt, giving the final set designer plenty of ideas and building techniques to refer to when designing the final set.
“I took a lot of inspiration from the boost,” Chris reveals. “One of the key things that came out was the eucalyptus plant. But as things go, one of the most interesting things for us was, 'what does this element look like, and can this represent that plant?' For example, where we have combined the ice cream swirl with the peony, this is an ice cream tulip. That's an actual type of tulip!”
In the outdoor gardens you can find:
- purple hydrangeas
- red and orange peonies
- yellow tulips and two-tone “ice cream” tulips
- pink zinnias
- pink Egyptian starclusters (Pentas lanceolata)
- St. John’s Wort with pink berries (Hypericum)
- European ivy (Hedera helix)
- weeping white spruce (Picea glauca ‘pendula’)
- Japanese maple (Acer palmatum)
Inside the main atrium, moving clockwise from the front doors, you’ll find:
- Himalayan ivy (Hedera nepalensis)
- flamingo flower (Anthurium)
- Welsh poppy (Papaver cambricum)
- coffee plant (Coffea)
- Orange banksia (Banksia prionotes)
- pink lupines (Lupinus)
- golden angel’s trumpet (Brugmansia aurea)
- bird of paradise flower (Strelitzia reginae)
- snow gum (Eucalyptus pauciflora)
- hart’s-tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium)
- corpse flower/giant padma (Rafflesia arnoldii)
- assorted mushrooms (including Amanita pantherina in dark tan, Amanita muscaria in red, and Amanita flavoconia in yellow)
- date palm (Phoenix dactylifera)
- green pitcher plants (Sarracenia oreophila)
- Alpine larch (Larix lyallii)
- bamboo
- pink Astilbe
The cacti in the arid garden wing include:
- torch cactus (Soehrensia huascha var. Grandiflora)
- ball cactus (Parodia magnifica)
- Mexican fencepost cactus (Lophocereus marginatus)
- Aztekium hintonii cactus cluster
Finally, hanging in the cafe are some potted philodendrons. How many of these different species did you recognize? A few of them were certainly new to me!
21353 The Botanical Garden
READ MORE: Review: 76294 X-Men: The X-Mansion from LEGO® Marvel
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All text ©2024 New Elementary. All images are ©2024 The LEGO Group unless otherwise attributed.
I may be missing something, but it looks like the pricing information isn't included.
ReplyDeleteIs that my sarcasm detector flashing??
DeleteIt's at the bottom of the article instead of at the top! apologies if that was confusing.
DeleteIt’s at the top too!
DeleteGreat coverage, Skye! The designer insights, especially the identification of two minifigs and the various plant species is much appreciated. The grayscale images with circles of color identifying elements of interest make the reading experience easier and more enjoyable for me.
ReplyDeleteEver since seeing the banana peel in my kids' copy of Motorcycle Chase: Spider-Man vs. Doc Ock, I have thought it could have some nice botanical applications, although I expected to see it used as a flower, not leaves. Thanks for pointing it out!