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Set Review - #41757-1: Botanical Garden - Friends
A Friends set… what??? This is the first one I’ve ever built ever so time for a review. #41757-1: Botanical Gardens was released on 1 June 2023 and as of today it’s retired. I caught it on sale before Christmas 2024 and picked up two to try and assemble a larger Botanical Garden instead of the expensive Ideas set. This one was $79.99 and had 1,072 pieces which worked out to $0.075 per piece. I got it for $65, but saw it for a bit cheaper before it retired. Now you’ll have to catch it on the secondary market and it’ll probably be more expensive. Sorry if you missed it.
The box is very bright and friendly with the Friends logo on the front and the set displayed. The set is listed as 12+ which I was surprised to learn that it was designed for an older age group. The back shows some of the plants represented in the set along with some of the build details.
The set contains seven parts bags, an envelope with the instructions and stickers, and then two tan plates (16x16 and 8X16).
Here are the instructions and stickers. 11 stickers isn’t too bad, but I’d always like fewer. These stickers fit well with the set and help to add to the details so I guess I can’t complain.
Bag one starts with the pond on the outside of the building. The pond has a lot of details with printed koi, two ducks, lily pads, some flowers, and a small stand on the outside that gives the details on the plants there. The hole on the outside will hold a tree later on in the build.
The second bag starts to build the indoor garden itself. Inside are some desert plants and a faucet to help water the plants. The tiles in the center are for a tree later in the build.
The third bag adds to the building and includes some additional exotic plants. It also adds in some windows along with some tiles as a walking path on the outside of the building.
The fourth bag attaches a sun roof covering some additional plants. The build so far is pretty good. It’s got some fun details and decent build techniques, but it’s not overly challenging.
The fifth bag adds the half dome on the top with some butterflies. There is a small area with some butterfly food and a fountain on the top level outside of the building.
Bag six adds a tree in the center of the structure that can grow up into the dome area.
Bag seven, the final bag, adds a cherry tree to the outside. The pink leaves and flowers are a nice pop of color with the white building in the background.
Here’s the final build. I’ve never built a Friends set before, but this one was much better than I expected. I enjoyed the build and for those of you MOC builders out there, it has some decent pieces to use. I’m not a fan of the mini dolls and chose not to include them. We’ll populate it with minifigures at a later date. The set was a bit expensive, but the price per piece wasn’t too bad. I am glad I got it at a discount.
As mentioned at the beginning, I purchased two at a discount. It actually worked out good as my kiddos each got to build one.
This was the final product. My kiddos and I teamed up to build at once so it got a little crowded, but we had fun expanding it and figuring out how to use all the pieces along with adding some extra pieces. It’s not the model you’d expect to see on an AFOL website, but we had a blast trying to merge the two and we have another building to add to a future city..
Does anyone else build with their kiddos like this? Any other sets we should try?
Happy building!
