A bonsai tree is a disciplined art form that requires a lot of time and attention. It requires a lot of pruning, and shaping to accentuate specific design shapes and proportions. And while you can’t grow a real one, LEGO’s latest set has captured the intricacy of the practice by designing a model that focuses on mindfulness and contemplation.
The Bonsai Tree (10281) is part of the Botanical Collection, which features LEGO sets designed for grown-ups who enjoy mindful building or creative projects. The set comes with interchangeable elements that allow you to build the tree with either green leaves or pink cherry blossom blooms studded with baby frogs. It also includes a rectangular pot building base and slatted wooden-looking stand to create an elegant display piece.
Both the green leaves and pink flowers are easily changed with a swap of the color crowns. It’s a clever use of existing bricks to do so too. It does take a little longer to build the pink version of the model as you need to attach a number of pink flower and leaf elements on top of white leaf elements. The instructions do give you some hints on how to do this, but it’s not entirely clear.
The only other thing to note is that while the box and instruction booklet for the set are both black, the Bonsai Tree instructions feature light gray pages, instead of the difficult-to-read black pages found in the Flower Bouquet set. I’m not sure why they did this, but it certainly helps to make the instructions easier to follow.