How Lego’s garden grows

The Lego Botanicals collection, introduced in 2021, has rapidly become one of the Lego Group’s most popular products.

For the most part, these are not your kids’ Lego sets, consisting of the iconic coloured bricks produced by the Danish company. The expanding line of botanically themed sets have been created and designed by adults for adults. But not in the way you might expect.

Lego’s creative team now includes fans who are contributing extraordinary new ideas to the venture.

The Botanical Garden is the latest addition to the Lego Ideas collection. The hefty builder’s manual — at a whopping 391 pages — which accompanies this stunning new set begins with a profile of Valentina Bima, the fan designer who submitted her idea for an elegant 19th-century botanical garden structure to the Lego Ideas design team.

Bima, a young Italian architect who has experience designing buildings, enjoys building Lego as a way to let her creativity run wild and to relax. She has a passion for the architecture of grand Victorian-style greenhouses and began her Lego project by creating a digital model which took her two months to complete.

After Bima’s original submission was selected for production, Lego’s element designers finalized the blueprint and added a corner wall element.

The ornate structure has a large central atrium with two smaller atria. Inside, there are gardens, a spiral staircase leading to an observation deck, a café next to an outdoor patio and exotic plants including eucalyptus trees, date palms, Japanese maples, Ice Cream tulips, hydrangeas, birds of paradise, anthuriums, cacti, Arabica coffee and more.

In addition to instructions, the manual includes a brief history of the important role early greenhouses played in scientific research as well as the necessity for their structural design to allow as much sunlight as possible to pass through the glass panels that constituted their framework.

The Botanical Garden looks to be the pinnacle of Lego’s extraordinary flora-focused collection. Featuring more than 35 plant species and a dozen Lego mini figures including four staff members (the greenhouse manager, two gardeners equipped with tools and the café’s barista), the set comprises 3,792 pieces and three removable, see-through roofs to allow builders to access the interior.

The completed model measures 22-centimetres high by 51-cm wide by 25-cm long, and retails at $429.99.

The Lego Icons Bouquet of Roses set has a permanent place in my kitchen. The dozen brick-built red roses (more than 50 elements in each rose), with their long green stems accented by four sprigs of baby’s breath, are in a glass vase on my kitchen counter. After seeing a photo from Lego which shows the Botanical Garden set in a bathroom, I now know where mine will go once it has been built.

The Botanical Garden is a part of both the Lego Ideas theme and the Lego Botanical Collection. Lego Ideas sets are inspired by fan creations. Once uploaded to the Lego Ideas site, they are voted on by fans. After a set receives 10,000 votes, it is reviewed by Lego designers and a select few go on to become official sets.

One such set is the new Lego Ideas Insect Collection (for ages 18 and up, 1,111 pieces, $99.99).

The collection consists of five insects (three of which are fully posable): a blue morpho butterfly native to the jungles of Central and South America; a Hercules beetle, which is the longest beetle in the world; a Chinese mantis; a seven-spotted ladybug; and a honeybee.

Learning blossoms with involvement in creative projects as well as through recreational play. The Insect Collection offers a mindful experience where builders learn about the biome or ecosystem these insects inhabit and gain an appreciation for the vital role insects play in our day-to-day lives.

This holiday season you may be inspired to construct the fan-designed set based on the gorgeous house from the 1990 blockbuster film, Home Alone. The Home Alone set is based on a design submitted to the Lego Ideas platform by 28-year-old Alex Storozhuk from Ukraine. But if you want it finished in time for the holidays, you better get started now — the set consists of 3,955 pieces.

More doable would be the Lego Icons Wreath Making Kit and Holiday Garland, with orange slices, berries, cinnamon sticks and pine cones (1,194 pieces), or a Lego Icons poinsettia in a woven-basket flower pot (608 pieces). Any one of the Lego Botanicals sets would be suitable for your home or office décor or as a unique gift idea for friends, family and loved ones.

What’s so fascinating about Lego Botanicals is that there is so much more to come. On Jan. 1, four new sets will be available for purchase at Lego stores across Canada or from Lego.ca/Botanical-Collection.

The four new Lego Botanicals sets will be: Pretty Pink Flower Bouquet, Mini Orchid, Lucky Bamboo and Botanicals Flower Arrangement. The orchid and bamboo, both displayed in plant pots, complete the classic quartet of plants known as the “Four Gentlemen” which also includes Lego Icons’ Chrysanthemum and Plum Blossom.

New Lego Botanicals set Pretty Pink Flower Bouquet for adults features 15 flower stems and foliage, including daisies, cornflowers, eucalyptus, elderflowers, roses, ranunculus, cymbidium orchids, waterlily dahlia and campanula. Adjustable stems allow you to create your own unique floral arrangements.

Waterlily dahlias are so-called because their multiple layers of outward-facing, somewhat flattened petals are reminiscent of waterlily flowers. The set consists of 749 pieces and retails at $79. The finished model is 32-cm high.

The Lego Botanicals Flower Arrangement is an appealing floral arrangement featuring camellia, peonies, hydrangeas, baby’s breath, ranunculus, bouvardia and lilies.

Bouvardia? That was new to me, but I have since learned it is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. Pentas, for example, is in the same family.

Plant enthusiasts, no matter their level of gardening experience, will learn something new from Lego Botanicals because the sets’ designers are passionate and excited about the opportunity to cultivate builders’ imaginations.

Lego Botanical Almanac: A Field Guide to Brick-Built Blooms (Chronicle Books, 2024) takes a close-up look at the flowers, succulents and greenery that inspired 15 sets in the popular, ever-expanding Lego Botanical line, including interviews with Lego set designers. In this surprising book, each plant showcased is identified by its genus, including details of height, flowering time, optimum light conditions and natural habitat, along with hand-drawn illustrations.

Did you know the money tree — such an appropriate plant for this festive (read: expensive) time of year — can grow up to 18-metres high in its native habitat in Central and South America, but when kept indoors as a houseplant, it will only grow to between 1.8 and 2.4 metres? There is much more to learn about the money tree in the Lego Botanical Almanac and there’s even a Lego Money Tree set.

Another interesting fact is that the Lego Group is endeavouring to make bio-based Lego elements from Brazilian sugarcane and is transitioning from single-use plastic to paper-based packaging. It’s a whole new playing field.

For ideas and tips to keep your outdoor and indoor plants growing, sign up to receive Winnipeg Gardener, a free monthly newsletter I write for the Free Press. You can find the latest edition and sign up to receive the newsletter at winnipegfreepress.com/newsletter/winnipeg-gardener

colleenizacharias@gmail.com