Review: 10343 Mini Orchid and 10344 Lucky Bamboo from LEGO® Botanicals

In July, I reviewed LEGO® Botanicals sets 10368 Chrysanthemum & 10369 Plum Blossom. They were pronounced to be two of the Four Gentlemen: a set of traditional plants in East Asian culture. The remaining two are bamboo and orchid. Those flowers are less straightforward to make into LEGO sets: orchid because it already appeared in sets 10311 Orchid and 43237 Isabela's Flowerpot (review of 43237 by me, again), and bamboo because it's basically some sticks, and thus not interesting… or so we thought. 

On 1 January 2025, sets 10343 Mini Orchid and 10344 Lucky Bamboo will be available, and today I am going to see if they are worthy successors to the first pair – both of which got good marks from me.

Review: 10342 Pretty Pink Flower Bouquet from LEGO® Botanicals

2025 is not here yet, but we're having an early start with the new element mega-party pack, LEGO® Botanicals 10342 Pretty Pink Flower Bouquet. The "Botanical Collection" no longer sits under the LEGO® Icons branding and instead becomes its own theme, so are these plant sets still worthy of adult hobbyists?

Review: 10370 Poinsettia from LEGO® Icons Botanical Collection

Charming festive display piece or stunning parts pack? LEGO® Icons Botanical Collection 10370 Poinsettia is both! One third of its 608 parts are rare or exclusive, all of which are integral to the plant's striking bracts, plentiful foliage and sturdy woven-basket flowerpot.

Review: 10340 Wreath from LEGO® Botanical Collection

Even at a glance, it's clear 10340 Wreath aims to combat the winter blues with a whole forest of green and some zesty orange slices. Let's see what else the latest entry in the LEGO® Icons Botanical Collection has to offer.

Pre-order available: 10340 Wreath and 10370 Poinsettia from the LEGO® Botanical Collection

The LEGO® Botanical Collection has revealed two new sets that make ideal Christmas presents. They're available from 1 October 2024, but you can pre-order right now. They have a bounty of new pieces to harvest, so let's take a look.

Review: 10368 Chrysanthemum & 10369 Plum Blossom from LEGO® Icons Botanical Collection

LEGO® Icons sets tend to be expensive; often priced in the triple digit spending realm. LEGO Icons Botanical Collection sets have been more affordable, with the most expensive to date, 10289 Bird of Paradise (review by Victor), breaking the 100 € ceiling in some countries. Outside of the Botanical Collection branding, LEGO has released smaller flower-themed sets within the price range of one or two dozen euros. 

Two new sets available in August 2024, 10368 Chrysanthemum and 10369 Plum Blossom, combine these two ideas – a low price point of about 30 € each, and lifestyle picture-worthy aesthetics and quality. How do they fare, and what are they made of?

Revealed: sets 10368 Chrysanthemum and 10369 Plum Blossom from LEGO® Icons Botanical Collection

Coming 1 August 2024 are two stunning new additions to LEGO® Icons popular Botanical Collection: sets 10368 Chrysanthemum and 10369 Plum Blossom.

LEGO® Icons review + MOC: 10328 Bouquet of Roses

The Botanical Collection is a subtheme of LEGO® Icons that features relatively affordable sets. In reality, similar life-size botanical subjects have found their way to other LEGO themes, too, including LEGO® Creator and, surprisingly, LEGO® Disney Princess sets. For me, these sets appeal as beautiful models. However, I'm foremost a MOC maker, and they are very good material for own creations – they include usually many of the same pieces, often in bright colours and sleek, organic shapes. 

The Botanical Collection often features many species, with differing colours, but set 10328 Bouquet of Roses focuses on strong red romanticism. How does it score with a MOC builder like me, and what did its pieces inspire me to build?

Flowerfest: Caz Mockett

Having introduced the sets that we have been using in our Flowerfest back in April, I've enjoyed seeing the MOCs built by my fellow contributors Eero Okkonen, Tom Loftus and Thomas Jenkins. It's now up to me to follow their fantastic articles and close our festival with some creations of my own.

Flowerfest: Thomas Jenkins

For our FlowerFest, we're analyzing and building with elements found in the 2023 LEGO® Botanical Collection sets: 40646 Daffodils, 10313 Wildflower Bouquet, and 10314 Dried Flower Centerpiece. Eero Okkonen and Tom Loftus have already treated us to some blooming wonderful creations; now it's my turn. 

Flowerfest: Tom Loftus

Last week, New Elementary's Flowerfest kicked off with an impressive line-up of character builds by Eero Okkonen. A Sontaran built from rose petals is a tough act to follow, but I'm ready to do my best! I'll be analyzing two recent arrivals to the LEGO® Botanical Collection - 40646 Daffodils and 10313 Wildflower Bouquet - and sharing MOCs inspired by their parts.

Flowerfest: Eero Okkonen

After we took a look at the new and rare parts in the 2023 LEGO® Icons Botanical Collection sets a week ago, I am now kicking off our Flowerfest! Over the next few weeks, my New Elementary colleagues and I will reveal what we created with these beautiful elements.

I received two LEGO® Icons Botanical Collection sets, 40646 Daffodils and 10314 Dried Flower Centrepiece. As usual, these floral bricks and pieces inspired me to build flowing hair and elegant clothes… Well, mostly. I also turned a rose into Sontaran.

Flowerfest: Introducing the elements

Here at New Elementary, we love a good Parts Festival! But we also love to push boundaries. So how about a Parts Festival containing no new moulds?

For our latest series of posts exploring new uses for elements, Eero Okkonen, Tom Loftus, Thomas Jenkins and myself will be harvesting three 2023 sets for seed parts... which will blossom into our original creations for your perusal.

LEGO® review: 40524 Sunflowers

Caz Mockett (@cazmockett) reviews 40524 Sunflowers, a set from LEGO® Iconic line coming 1 January 2022 priced US$12.99/ £11.99/ AU$19.99. Buying this set? Consider using our affiliate links, New Elementary may get a commission: USA LEGO Shop | Australia LEGO Shop | UK LEGO Shop/for Europe 'Change region'. Products in this article were provided by LEGO; the author's opinions are their own.

Following on from the popular 2021 releases of smaller LEGO® Iconic botanical sets, 40460 Roses and 40461 Tulips, the third in the series has just been revealed: 40524 Sunflowers.

LEGO® Botanical Collection review: 10289 Birds of Paradise

Victor Pruvost (@leewanlego) reviews an upcoming addition to the LEGO® Botanical Collection today: 10289 Birds of Paradise. Buying this set? Consider using our affiliate links, New Elementary may get a commission: UK LEGO Shop | USA LEGO Shop | Australia LEGO Shop, for other countries 'Change Region'. The products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

10289 Birds of Paradise, the third set in the recent LEGO® Botanical Collection, has just been revealed. With 1173 elements, it is the set with the highest parts count to date, and also the most expensive: it will cost 99.99 EUR / 89.99 GBP / 99.99 USD and will be released on 1 June 2021, except in North America where it will be released on 1 August.

LEGO® Designers interview: 10281 Bonsai Tree

Recently, Thomas Jenkins represented New Elementary in a virtual roundtable interview with the designer of LEGO® Botanical Collection 10280 Bonsai Tree, Nicolaas Vás (aka @PrinceGalidor) and Senior Design Manager Jamie Berard along with Jay's Brick Blog, the Brothers Brick, the Rambling Brick and Blocks Magazine. We each had 8 minutes to ask our questions, so what follows is but a short excerpt from our conversation (edited for readability and clarity). We sent Nick and Jamie our questions ahead of the interview and they came back with some really thoughtful responses. Be sure to check out the other outlets for more.

New Elementary: The pink frogs in the set as well as your own bonsai creations have inspired a number of custom trees blooming with crazy flowers in the AFOL community, are there any that have caught your eye?

Nick: There was a particular tree that I saw from a Japanese builder online and he had basically covered the entire tree with LEGO® Friends hedgehogs and it was fantastic to see that he absolutely gets what this product is about.

 

LEGO® Botanical Collection review: 10281 Bonsai Tree

Thomas Jenkins (@thomas_jenkins_bricks) has another LEGO® Botanical Collection review for you today; the 878-piece Bonsai Tree. Buying this set? Consider using our affiliate links: UK LEGO Shop | USA LEGO Shop | Australia LEGO Shop, for other countries 'Change Region'. New Elementary may get a commission. The products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

Much like building with LEGO® bricks, bonsai is the art of replicating its subject at a much smaller scale. As such, a LEGO bonsai tree is a match made in heaven.

It’s exciting to see the LEGO Group continue to branch out into the adult market. 10281 Bonsai Tree is one of two sets from the new Botanical Collection, a sub-theme of the Creator Expert series. The Bonsai will be released alongside 10280 Flower Bouquet (read our review here) on 1 January 2021 and will be priced at US$49.99/ €49.99/ £44.99/ AU$89.99/ 449.0 DKK/ CA$69.99.

LEGO® Botanical Collection review: 10280 Flower Bouquet

Thomas Jenkins (@thomas_jenkins_bricks) has been busy tending his LEGO® Botanical Collection sets, starting with the 756-piece Flower Bouquet Buying this set? Consider using our affiliate links: UK LEGO Shop | USA LEGO Shop | Australia LEGO Shop, for other countries 'Change Region'. New Elementary may get a commission.

I’m not a fan of plastic flowers, but after a quick glance at the box of the new LEGO® Flower Bouquet I’m already starting to change my mind.

10280 Flower Bouquet sows the seed for the new Botanical Collection, which currently includes one other set, 10281 Bonsai Tree, which I have also reviewed. They're an exciting new addition to the 18+ range, offering something quite unique: non-licensed, non-minifig, real-world scale display pieces. Plus, at US$49.99/ €49.99/ £44.99/ AU$89.99/ 449.0 DKK/ CA$69.99 they're among the least expensive of the new adult-oriented sets.