REVIEW: 21353 The Botanical Garden

[Pchan1983]

Here is my review on LEGO Ideas 21353 The Botanical Garden:

THE GOOD:

• Look absolutely beautiful.
• With some very nice interior details.
• Good selection of plants with interesting building experience.
• Love the new flowers pieces.
• Comes with surprisingly high number of lego birds and even the D&D CMF brown bird.

THE NOT SO GOOD:

• A bit too expensive.
• The centre roof need extra care to put on as one of the tree often interfere with it.

Bought this day one with the GWP promo and what a beautiful looking set.  I only appreciate the look of it once I completed the build.  It's an enjoyable build with lots of details with relatively no surprises.  Most of the build are very traditional in , the only parts I felt wow I didn't know you can build like this were one of the big tree with the trunk built by gears and the small balcony inside but this is due to the fact I have built lots of big sets in the past 10 years.  The exterior looks great but the interior is fun too.  The cafe has some very simple yet detailed mini builds that I absolutely love.  The new flowers piece is so flexible and great to look at.  It's also good to see LEGO include 12 minifigures which is rare in a LEGO Ideas set.  Although most of them are just utilising existing parts, but the new vision impaired minifigure head does look good and has lots of potential.  One thing to note though, LEGO tried their best to pack the transparent pieces in seperate bags to minimise scratches but I still got a few noticeable scratches.  And while the big tree is nice, it sometimes does caught in the edge of the roof when putting the roof on, not big issue and can be avoided with care but I wish this goes smoother.The GWP has the same pavements design and look fits well.  However, due to different base plates, it does look odd to have it placed right in front without lifting up the Botanical Garden.  In the end, this is a very beautiful set but also fairly expensive.  It does gives you more in terms of volume and details compare to the X-Mansion released at the same time but still the price feel a bit expensive.  If you don't mind the price, it's definitely one of the best this year.  Otherwise the LEGO friends one is probably is also an alternative with a more interesting building experience.