LEGO Ideas 21353 The Botanical Garden came from the mind of a fan designer and has been refined by pros – so what sort of changes has the set gone through?
21353 The Botanical Garden is based on the original submission by fan designer Valentina Bima but, as with all LEGO Ideas projects, the LEGO Ideas team has worked with her to come up with a final design. That process takes a number of features into account, including affordability, practical use of pieces, and so on.
That means there are some differences between Valentina's original design and the end product. Here's a deep dive into what's remained the same and what's new.
On the face of it...
At first glance, the two versions of 21353 The Botanical Garden are fairly similar, with the same structure remaining: a central door, tiered windows rising up to the roof, and, of course, plenty of plants. The predominantly white structure has stayed the same, with transparent glass, although decorative elements have been lost, like the white flower elements, in favour of using beige and sand green pieces to break up the white lines.
Same windows, less visibility
Another noticeable change is the windows. The original fan design used a lot of large transparent panes, meaning you could see directly into the building, especially from the back as pictured above. The sand green windows frames on the lower floor of 21353 The Botanical Garden in its final version mean it's harder to see in. However, the LEGO Ideas team has got around this by making it easy to lift off the upper floors, allowing easy access to the interior, even if there's less of a clear line of sight.
No more modular
While 21353 The Botanical Garden has lift-away elements like the Modular Buildings Collection, it doesn't have the same modular functionality as other modular buildings, like first included in the design. That means there are no street, lamp posts, and Technic pin connection points – although the LEGO Group does seem to deem it as being aligned with the Modular Buildings Collection.
A knock-on effect of the lack of modular compatibility is that there's no pavement along the front, with the path leading to the building opening up directly. There's space dedicated to the outside hardens, with various pink and purple flowers, as well as a red-leafed tree – arguably more space than the original design – but it's lost the plated pavement along the front that came in the original design.
More colour, more plants, more variety
The backing of the LEGO Ideas means that there's the possibility to introduce recoloured elements and more variety of pieces than many fan designers have access to – and that's certainly paid off in the case of 21353 The Botanical Garden. While Valentina's design featured an impressive variety of plants and LEGO pieces, it's on a whole other scale in the final design, with what looks like new colour versions of flowers outside, various small trees and shrubs, and the centrepiece of a date palm inside, to name but a few.
That adds a lot more colour and vibrance to the set, off set while by the largely white and beige building itself. If that floats your boat, then 21353 The Botanical Garden will be available to buy for £289.99/ $329.99 / €329.99 from November 1 for LEGO Insiders and November 4 for everyone else. Early adopters will receive a bonus gift-with-purchase, 5009005 Botanicals Entrance Gate, when buying the latest LEGO Ideas set from November 1 to 7 (or while stocks last).
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