Review: LEGO 21353 The Botanical Garden (2024)

October 25, 2024 | 17

Jay Ong

LEGO Ideas finishes 2024 incredibly strong with 21353 The Botanical Garden, an impeccably-designed model that’s one of the most aesthetically-pleasing buildings that LEGO have ever produced.

21353 The Botanical Garden blends architecture, colour, storytelling and of course a plethora of brick-built plants that will delight your inner Botanist, and is bound to grow on LEGO fans once it releases exclusively on LEGO.com or your local LEGO Store on 1 November 2024 (for LEGO Insiders, which is free to sign up to).

But with an eye-watering US$329.99 / AU$499.99 / £289.99 pricetag that places it as the 3rd most expensive LEGO Ideas set of all time (beat only by the Grand Piano and 21348: Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale), will it be too much of an ask for LEGO fans already heaving beneath cost-of-living pressures? Read on for my detailed review of 21353 The Botanical Garden, and maybe, just maybe, this set will grow on you.

Check out the global pricing and regional product pages below:

• 21353 The Botanical Garden [US] – US$329.99
• 21353 The Botanical Garden [AUS] – AU$499.99
• 21353 The Botanical Garden [UK] – £289.99
• 21353 The Botanical Garden [EU] – €329.99
• 21353 The Botanical Garden [CA] – CAD$429.99
• 21353 The Botanical Garden [SG] – SGD$479.99

Fans who order 21353 The Botanical Garden between 1-7 November 2024, will also receive the 5009005 Entrance Gate GWP (gift with purchase) while stocks last.

Special thanks to LEGO for sending this set over for review.

If you’re planning on purchasing or pre-ordering this set, please consider using the affiliate links in this post. I may earn a small commission with each purchase that helps support the work I do on the blog!

21353 The Botanical Garden Set Details

Here’s a look at the sticker sheet included. There are only 5 small sticker sheets, and I especially love the largest one which has plenty of cool nods to the fan designer, Valentine Bima (@goannas89 on Instagram) such as her sausage dog and a blueprint of her original design.

Here’s a look at the instruction manual. It’s a bit of a shame that there’s only one (hefty) instruction book, as this is quite a large build, and it would’ve been nice to share the build with a partner. Hopefully this set has Build Together compatibility via the LEGO Builder App.

The instructions has the usual fare, an introduction to the fan designer, a section on the architectural influences that inspired the design, and information on some of the plant species references in the build, but for me, the most interesting page is the fan designer section, which showcases a brick-built model of Valentina Bima’s original design.

In the official reveal post, there was a lot of debate over how many fans preferred the taller original design, which sits on a smaller footprint but is much taller and has a bit more of a unique, glass-dominated look.

Seeing this brick-built design in such a prominent section of the manual does make you wonder about what if the final design looked more like the original, and this great bit of photography makes that hypothetical just a bit more vivid.

Building the LEGO Ideas Botanical Garden

My wife helped me build the set, and I had the pleasure of watching her build it, and seeing the set come to life. According to her, it was an extremely pleasant build, with great flow and a large variety of things to do.

You start with the double baseplate, lay the foundations, tile the interiors, and then begin work on the flowerbeds and botanical displays within the main atrium. For LEGO fans that enjoy NPU (Nice Parts Usage), building the 35 different plant species and getting to see all these different plants come to life, with some ingenious parts usage.

You then begin to build the walls, and encase the Botanical Garden, followed by assembly of the roof to cap off the build, and finishing off by building the large Japanese Maple Tree out the front, and the fountain for the finishing touches.

At 3,792-pieces, The Botanical Garden is the second biggest LEGO Ideas set by piece count, so you’ll be in for hours of fun LEGO building that’s accessible and pleasurable.

The Botanical Garden Minifigures

There are 12 minifigures included in the set, which is a whole LEGO Collectible Minifigures series-worth of minifigures. I really appreciated the huge number of characters, which really enhance playability, and story-telling and just fill this large set with a human vibrancy that you get from a ton of minifigures.

Here are the Botanical Gardens staff. There’s a manager, 2 gardeners and a barista working at the cafe, making brick-built lattes. The new torsos with the brown aprons are really nice-looking and minifigure fans are going to appreciate just how versatile these look. Also like the Sand Green theme that they have going, which complements the primary colours of the Botanical Gardens.

Oh and a fun little Easter Egg here. The manager (in the blue quilted vest) is actually a nod to Valentina Bima, the fan designer! What an epic honour to be immortalised as a LEGO minifigure in this way!

Here’s their back prints and alternate faces.

There are plenty of visitors to the Botanical Garden, with a nice mix of different ages, and genders. The minifigures despite being nameless, play a key role in story-telling. I especially like the boy’s expressions, with a cheeky smile because he’s plucked a flower, and an annoyed alternate face when told off by his mum.

I shared this on Instagram, but in LEGO’s continuing efforts to expand diversity and inclusion, here’s a look at a visually-impaired minifigure. Matthew Parsons, the Graphic Designer worked on this dual-sided head which portrays a sight-impaired man without glasses.

Interviewed at Fan Media Days in Billund, Jordan Scott, LEGO Ideas Design Manager expanded on the design process: “Regarding the visually impaired figure, we used our Design Governance and D&IE (Diverse, Inclusive and Equity-based) team gave us a lot of valuable input based on their knowledge so that Matt the graphic designer could make an authentic and respectful representation of someone with a visual impairment who doesn’t wear glasses. We are really happy that we had the opportunity to include this new head and hope it will be used across the portfolio for years to come!”

The minifigures are great, and with 12 of them, they really add a lot of value, playability and story-telling to the set.

The Completed Model

Here is the completed model, and oh, what an incredible piece of LEGO Architecture. The Botanical Garden is hands down one of the most beautiful large buildings that LEGO has ever created.

The set’s wide format, spanning two complete LEGO baseplates really allows for a grand sense of scale that wouldn’t normally be possible, giving this white and sand green structure plenty of display presence.

The stark colours of the building, topped with its predominantly clear glass roof contrast against the burst of colours of flowerbeds that adorn the front.

With the white and sand green colour scheme, the design team did experiment with plenty of colours, but ultimately landed here as it best captured the classic Victorian greenhouse look. Which also coincidentally, is the same colour scheme as the Friends Botanical Garden!

There’s this beauty that I can’t quite describe about the symmetry and how the lines, columns and curves of the roof and arched windows all just come together in a beautiful symphony of architectural delight.

There are sections of the building like these which your eyes are just drawn into.

And yes, the back is fully enclosed too. Dollhouse-type designs have been quite common with LEGO buildings to allow for ease of access to the interiors, but with the Roof designed to be easily removed, and the set’s wider than usual footprint, this enabled the designer to fully enclose it, plus use the space at the back for a seating area for the cafe, and a place for the Botanical Gardens staff to store their tools and fill up their watering cans.

I just love the garden hose spraying water everywhere here.

And here’s a view from the side.

The roof is designed to be removed easily, and some wall sections too, to grant visual and physical access to the insides. Despite this being a fairly enclosed building, this feature really allows you to get inside of the building with ease.

The roof is also remarkable, and the use of the new clear corner element, and arches really grab your attention visually, like all new elements do.

Oh, LEGO also packaged all these clear pieces separately.. which reduces the chance they get scratched up, yay!

The clear corner roof element and this exciting new 1×5 arch are newly developed elements that were made specifically for this set. For the longest time, LEGO Ideas sets didn’t have the luxury of creating new elements (outside of minifigures), but it looks like that rule has been thrown out the window.

These elements (especially the 1×5) were developed specifically to solve the problem with the corners for the roof, and it was the right call as the roof just looks exquisite.

Here’s a look at the interiors. There are 3 atriums, with the main one being where a lot of the plants are. They’re flanked by an Arid Area for Cacti on the left, and a small cafe on the right.

The best view of the interiors is actually before the walls go up, so be sure to properly appreciate clear view of the main atrium plants here.

Here’s the cosy cafe – probably one of the best cafes that LEGO has ever designed, especially as it’s squeezed into quite a tight spot. Love all the coffee-making paraphernalia and there’s even a glass display cabinet for pastries.

This spiral staircase is also very clever, and I love the use of the fences for the grated staircase.

Plant Species in the LEGO Botanical Garden

It goes without saying that the plants and flowers included in this set are the stars of the show, and botanists and plant enthusiasts will absolutely relish at the sheer variety, and creative ingenuity with bringing many of these familiar plants to life.

There are 2 main highlights for me. This recoloured banana peel, which is turned upside down for leaves is just pure genius and they’re found in the exterior garden beds. These pink flowers are Pentas Lanceolata / Egyptian Starcluster.

A new LEGO Botanical element makes its debut in the set – these gorgeous tulip buds which were designed for this set! These look incredible and it’s always exciting when a new LEGO Flower element gets introduced!

The LEGO Peonies were also newly designed but LEGO Wicked sets were where they made their official debut, but during the design process, these were developed FOR the Botanical Garden.

There are 35 unique plant species included in the set, and I have the full list of plants featured in the LEGO Botanical Garden below. Great for a plant treasure hunt!

Exterior

• Large Tree (Exterior): Japanese Maple
• Small Dark Green Trees (Exterior, flanking the entrance): Weeping White Spruce
• Pink Flowers (Exterior, front flower beds): Pentas Lanceolata / Egyptian Starcluster
• Purple Flowers (Exterior, front flower beds): Purple Hydrangeas
• Pink Flowers with white tops (Exterior, far right): Pink Ice Cream Tulips
• Pink tulip-like flowers on bush (Exterior, far left): Hypericum with Pink Berries
• Yellow Potted Flower (Exterior, rear, on patio): Yellow Tulip
• Pink Flowers (Exterior, rear wall): Pink Zinnias

Interior

• Large Tree (Interior Left): Eucalyptus Pauciflora
• Large Tree (Interior Right): Date Palm
• Medium Tree (Behind Staircase): Alpine Larch
• Medium Tree (Front Right): Bamboo
• Pink Flowers (Front Right): Pink Astilbe
• Vine (Climbs above entrance): Himalayan Ivy (Hedera nepalensis)
• Coral Flowers (Front Left): Anthurium
• Small Light Yellow Flowers (Front Left): Yellow/Welsh Poppy
• Tall Plant with Cherry Elements (Front Left): Coffee Plant
• Orange/White flower: (Front Left): Orange Banksia (Banksia Prionotes)
• Pink Flowers (Back Left): Pink Lupines
• Tall Plant with Yellow Crowns (Back Left): Yellow Angel Trumpet Plant
• 2X Leafy Plants (Back Middle Left, Middle Right): Asplenium Scolopendrium (Hart’s Tongue Fern)
• Plant with Orange Crests (Back Left): Bird of Paradise
• Large Red Flower (Back Middle): Rafflesia arnoldi (Corpse Flower / Giant Padma)
• Mushrooms (Back Right): Assorted, including Amanita Pantherina (Dark Tan), Amanita Muscaria Red), and Amanitas Flavoconia (Yellow).
• Lime Green Plants: (Back Right, to left of staircase): Sarracenia Oreophila (Pitcher Plants)
• Hanging in Café: Philodendrons
• Tall Green Cactus Trio (Desert Garden): Pachycereus Marginatus (Fence Post Cactus)
• Short Cactus with Yellow Flower (Desert Garden): Parodia magnifica
• Tall Green Cactus with Pink Flower (Desert Garden) Echinopsis Grandiflora (Torch Cactus)
• Cactus Cluster (Desert Garden): Aztekium Hintonii

How many can you spot in the photo gallery above?

35 unique plant species is a LOT to design for, and to make it happen, the LEGO Ideas team organised a Design Boost, putting out an open call to LEGO Designers to drop what they’re doing and come together as a big team to smash out designs.

Jordan Scott, LEGO Ideas Design Manager expanded on this further: “a design boost is basically a small break from our everyday tasks where we bring the design team together, issue a small brief and have a short period of time to build on that brief.

This is especially useful if you have a lot of things to explore such as species of plants! They are small enough that you can knock out a few in an hour and if you have the whole design team helping, you can gather many unique builds in a short span of time. In the end, we maybe had about 20 different small builds and Chris adapted two of them into the final model; The Eucalyptus (from Ann) and the Cactus Cluster/Aztekium Hintonii (from Mary).

This just goes to show that we work very closely together as a team and really support one another in our models! It’s a lot of fun for me as a Creative Lead too because I get a chance to build a bit again! We do these boosts regularly too, if someone is struggling with a function or a way to build a particular part of their model, we bring the team together to generate a lot of solutions in a short window, but it also just gives you some fresh perspectives!”

Here’s a look at the two large trees in the main atrium – an Eucalyptus Tree (woohooo!), and a Date Palm!

The Eucalyptus and Date Palm can be lifted out with ease and the format will seem very familiar if you own 10315 Tranquil Garden, which introduced these modular tree designs. There are slots in the ground, and they can be swapped in and out to create different arrangements.

Which also means that you can transplant the native Japanese trees into the Botanical Garden, if you want to give the Botanical Garden a Japanese vibe!

Very cool to see this format continue on here, and it makes me wonder if we’ll see more like this across the LEGO Icons range, especially for Botanical-themed sets.

In case you were curious, designer Chris McVeigh’s favourite plant is the Ice Cream Tulip outside the botanical garden. The simplicity of the build using the actual ice cream swirl as an ice cream tulip combined with the new peony element which is super versatile just offered something new and fun! Design Manager Jordan Scott’s favourite plant is the coffee plant because it uses the red cherries to resemble the coffee fruit where the beans grow. It links to the café in the model as a nice story so you can imagine they are harvesting their own beans, though at that rate I think the café will only be producing one cup of coffee a day!

Is The Botanical Garden a Modular Building?

In the most technical and orthodox interpretations, no it’s not a Modular-building because the Botanical Garden lacks any area for connecting pins that link it up with Modular Buildings. Neither does it have a footpath (pavement), or street lamp on the corner that are telltale LEGO Modular Building hallmarks.

Despite plenty of marketing copy and it briefly showing up on the Modular Building Category Page at launch (it’s all been scrubbed, naturally), I actually think it fits in stylistically into the LEGO Modular Buildings collection. I’m not going to die on this hill, but I will put in a good shift defending my perspective.

Here’s the Botanical Garden slotted in between the Boutique Hotel, Police Station and Natural History Museum. While it doesn’t have pins, the depth is exactly a baseplate (36 studs), so it fits in nicely without any issues.

Scale-wise and even style-wise, I think it complements the Modular Buildings collection and injects some much-needed green space to the dense urban streetscape that defines the LEGO Modular Street. I also think the stark white design is a brilliant way to visually break up a Modular Street!

The design is architecturally-sound, and from my perspective, I think it goes pretty well alongside Modular Buildings, although the 62 stud-wide footprint will eat up two Modular Building’s worth, so make of that what you will when making space for it.

In fact, I think it’s a great companion to the Modular Museum, which always felt out of place alongside the more street-appropriate buildings!

And for the sake of thoroughness, here’s it next to the X-Mansion.

And of course, how could I not put it side by side with the original LEGO Friends Botanical Garden set, which is still one of my favourite sets ever. The Friends version is actually 25% off on Amazon.com and a whopping 44% off on Amazon.com.au. The steep discount, makes the Ideas set look bad, because if you have the knowhow, you could probably build a pretty decent Botanical Garden with multiple Friends sets.

Of course, I did ask about whether the runaway success of the Friends Botanical Garden (I gave it a perfect score in my review) inspire the design of the LEGO Ideas Botanical Garden.

“The LEGO Friends set of course had a hugely positive reception and we saw that as an opportunity to learn and take inspiration from it. We of course wanted to stay away from a similar architecture style which is another reason why the new window/roof element was developed, to give that authentic Victorian style and stray a little further away from the LEGO Friends style which was a lot more rounded with that huge glass dome.

We also wanted to avoid too much repetition of the species of plants inside so looked at what they had done and then tried to build newer plants or use more advanced techniques due to our age marking. However, the LEGO Friends team did absolutely nail the colour scheme with the sand green window frames and despite us trying multiple colour combinations, the sand green ultimately looked the best so we kept that in the LEGO Ideas version” said Jordan Scott, LEGO Ideas Design Manager.

What I liked:

• An incredibly engaging and fun build that just flows well
• Plenty of minifigures encourage play and storytelling
• So many creative Plant, Flower and Tree builds
• Stunning display model that looks good standalone, or as part of your Modular Collection
• New elements and recolours galore

What I didn’t like:

• It would be nice if the front wall/entrance could be entirely removed
• Price will dissuade fans who don’t have deep pockets

Final Thoughts

There is so much to like about 21353 The Botanical Garden, and I have to say that the model exceeded my expectations.

The Botanical Garden, with its massive 3,792 piece count, and dual baseplate spanning footprint is an ambitious effort by LEGO to tie together Botanicals, Modulars, and Architecture into a single package that is now the 3rd most expensive Ideas set, and 2nd biggest by piece count, which is nothing to sneeze at.

It’s a bold bet to also see if LEGO fans respond positively to an expensive, but highly detailed model that’s one of the most beautiful standalone buildings to come out of The LEGO Group in a long time.

As a LEGO set, 21353 The Botanical Garden is near-flawless. From the incredible build experience, which just flows so well, enhanced by clever and creative parts usage for 35 unique plants species, to the end product which manages to nail both playability and displayability without compromise.

The US$330 and AU$500 does elicit a bit of uncomfortable shock. Not in a “this is so overpriced and poor value” but more of a “wow, I didn’t know LEGO Botanical-themed sets could cost this much”.

The price is going to be the set’s biggest stumbling block, mostly because its at a threshold that you expect from a pricey Modular Building, or Ninjago City Gardens. It’s an entirely psychological barrier, because in all honestly, US$330 / AU$500 is not bad at all for a 3,800-piece LEGO set, especially one that looks as good as this.

This is compounded further when the LEGO Friends version is currently being clearanced and discounted by 25% off on Amazon.com and 44% off on Amazon.com.au, which may not necessarily be a bad thing because there is still a budget option for LEGO fans who don’t have crazily large incomes to afford sets like this.

Judging this set purely on its own merit, 21353 The Botanical Garden is an exceptional LEGO set, and one of those rare instances where the overall value does justify the set’s high pricetag, where its evident that there are very few compromises being made and you can just tell, from the moment you open the box to when you lay the last brick, just how much passion and expertise went into making this set.

I really like this set. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a masterpiece but there are very few LEGO sets that deliver such an outstanding experience on nearly every front like 21353 The Botanical Garden, and I’m glad that LEGO gets the opportunity to push the envelope like this set.

Final Score

5

Build

An amazing build experience that has plenty of variety, surprises and is still accessible for most builders

4

Display Value

A stunning display model that’s one of LEGO’s best

3

Real Value

Expensive but not overpriced. Still an intimidating price that puts it out of reach for a large swathe of fans

4

Innovation

Some really fun plant and flower builds, but not a push the envelope kind of set.

4

Keepability

Makes for a great standalone set, or looks great alongside modulars. LEGO Centerpiece-worthy.

Audience rating

How would you rate this set?

1 2 3 4 5

21353 The Botanical Garden will be released on 1 November 2024 (for LEGO Insiders), will be available exclusively from LEGO.com or your local LEGO Store.

Thanks so much for reading! I took so many photos of the LEGO Botanical Garden, mostly because of how photogenic it is, and this was one of my favourite shots!

What do you think of the 2024 LEGO Botanical Garden? Do you think its worth the price and are you planning on getting it?

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