New LEGO Houseplants: is Brick-Built Better Than the Real Thing?

Lots of us love houseplants but – whisper it! – lots of us are pretty good at failing to keep them alive, so would we be better off with a LEGO plant built of plastic bricks? LEGO kicked off its Botanical Collection in January 2021 with a bonsai tree and has grown it to over 50 sets of bouquets and potted plants. With the current focus on leafy houseplants from golden pothos to baby pilea, maybe it's time for us serial houseplant killers to swap potting soil and stems for tiny construction blocks.

According to the Danish brickmaker, the Botanicals range is 'perfect for the not-so-green-thumbed’. As a regular holder of houseplant funerals, I decided to find out what would be best, a bona fide plant or its brick equivalent.

1. Golden Pothos

Pothos is one of the easiest houseplants to keep alive, its waxy heart-shaped leaves on trailing vines only needing the occasional watering. Forget to give it a drink for a week or three and this forgiving plant will bounce back quickly. It tolerates lower-light rooms, and golden pothos is just as resilient as its all-green cousin – growing houseplants just doesn't get any less difficult than this.

Though pothos leaves are toxic to cats and dogs if eaten, this plant is usually displayed hanging so, lovely as the LEGO plant is, I reckon the real thing wins this first round.

2. Peace Lily

A little more demanding is the peace lily, needing 2-3 cups of water every week and boy, will you know about it if you forget. With a dramatic flounce and flop of its leaves, this houseplant is a diva when it comes to dry soil, though quickly perks up once moisture is restored.

Peace lilies do have the most beautifully elegant white flowers but if you want to enjoy them, you’ll need to keep it away from cold drafts and give it consistent temperatures between 60 and 70°F and bright, indirect light. Lots of people love the peace lily for its drama-queen persnickety personality but I’m voting for the no-nonsense LEGO version in this second round.

3. Orchid

There’s no doubt that orchids are heartstoppingly beautiful with their arching stems of blooms and glossy green leaves, but are they easy to grow? Moth orchids (Phalaenopsis) are the most forgiving and bloom most reliably, and are surprisingly straightforward to look after – as long as you learn the basics.

Pot this tropical plant up in a loose bark mix instead of potting mix, give it moist air by displaying it in a bathroom or standing its pot on a pebble tray of water, and ensure it gets indirect sunlight, and it’ll be just fine. But is it worth the faff? If you’re a dedicated orchid lover, absolutely. But if you’re not, the LEGO orchid brings joy without all the finely-tuned care programme, so bricks win round three.

4. Poinsettia

Not just for Christmas, poinsettia makes a cheery houseplant from fall to spring, when it drops its leaves and you prune the stems. So although it’s not much more than a stick over summer, if you remember to occasionally water it and then in autumn, stimulate new growth by giving the plant a daily dose of 14-16 of darkness, it returns for another flamboyant show.

Other than that, poinsettia is a cinch to look after but what makes having the real deal is the ornamental varieties which offer dreamy white, pink or white-speckled bracts as well as plain red. Sorry LEGO poinsettia, you can’t compete!

5. Mini Houseplants

Baby houseplants are irresistible, whether they’re made of plastic bricks or real-life petite stems and leaves. LEGO’s offering of nine mini arid, tropical and carnivorous plants gives great variety from pitcher plants to cacti and anthurium, and I’m awarding extra points for the terracotta-esque pots and that some bricks are made of plant-based plastic, sourced from sugar cane.

Even though nurturing baby houseplants brings huge satisfaction, and this set are all low-maintenance varieties that require minimal care, there will inevitably be one sad compost-heap funeral of the most needy. Consequently, round 5 puts the bijou bricks on the podium.

6. Bonsai Tree

While the baby houseplants were cute, the charm of a petite tree is off the scale, whether that’s brick-built in hours or trained over decades. While the LEGO Japanese Red Maple Bonsai Tree impresses with that sculptural trunk and fiery leaves, the temptation of growing your own bonsai tree from seed is too strong for any gardener to resist.

Goodness knows if it will take a century or more to grow your own real-life red maple in bonsai form to the same proportions of the LEGO tree, but it sure will be fun trying. Round 6 goes to the real-deal one-day tree, rather than the tree that gets made in one day.

7. Chinese Money Plant

Smiling pots and an even cheerier pricetag make the LEGO Pilea peperomioides and dracaena virtually irresistible, but the same can be said for the plant itself. The Chinese money plant is one of the most low-maintenance houseplants you can grow, it’s pretty drought tolerant and the round coin-shaped leaves are wonderfully quirky. All you need to remember is to rotate the pot every few weeks to stop the plant leaning as it grows quickly.

Sealing the deal, though, is the plant’s habit of producing baby plantlets around its base, earning it the nickname of friendship plant as you can gift these. Its LEGO partner in crime, dracaena (available from Plant Addicts) is just as unkillable in real life, handing round 7 to the actual houseplants.

The Final Verdict

And there you have it! It was a close competition but real houseplants pipped the LEGO Botanicals to the post in the closing seconds. I like the idea of mixing brick-built pot plants with shelf displays of real leaves though, and the sight of those handsome LEGO plants might just remind me to water my houseplants more regularly.