In December, 2025 I had the good fortune to visit LEGO Campus in Billund, Denmark. While there, I had the chance to talk with Theo Bonner – One of the Senior Designers working on LEGO’s Botanicals Theme. During the 45 minutes that we spoke, we covered a variety of topics including the challenges of flowerpots, new colours, storytelling the Botanicals consumer base, storytelling and the lack of Spinjitzu in Botanical sets.
Today, in the first of our four reviews of upcoming Botanical releases, we will take a look at the 11501 Tulip Bouquet, and in our interview extract, we talk about the challenges of recolouring certain elements, the new curved slope element and its connection to a space theme from around the turn of the century.
When we got our first look at the Flower Bouquet, one of the first questions that people asked was ‘Why are the roses that colour? Surely they should be red.’ I should know, I was one of those people!
One of the overarching design goals was for it to surprise people with what subtlety, what simplicity, what elegance we can achieve with LEGO Bricks. Those are adjectives I don’t think you would hear a lot of people necessarily use about a LEGO toy. Many other positive adjectives (were goals) like elegant, sophisticated – I hope we achieved that. One of the things that came first to mind was that we have this beautiful soft peach colour, and we’ve barely used it. We’ve certainly never used it like this….
Anderson Grubb, designer of the 10280 Flower Bouquet set.
And so, in part that challenge was to drive that set towards surprise, subtlety and sophistication. And while you cannot deny the subtlty of that colour, it is probably not what many people would expect from a rose.
As we approach February, and with that, the 14th – Valentines Day , we find our selves reminded that
Roses are red, Violets are blue
This poem can’t express myFeelings for you
Anon.
And so, at this point our attention turns to roses, and indeed rose buds, which are a traditional gift at this time of the year..
