Great Brick Safari created with 80 life-size model animals
Two Lego building companies forged the sculptures for RHS Garden Wisley in Woking.
Eighty life-size Lego animal sculptures have been created to inhabit a collection called the Great Brick Safari.
The centrepiece of the safari at RHS Garden Wisley in Woking, an African elephant nicknamed Earl Grey, stands at just over 8ft tall and is made from 271,739 bricks.
A team of 65 people from Bright Brick, a Lego builder company, created the model animals, which will be found nestled among a lush display of exotic plants within a cathedral-like glasshouse.
It will also include an array of dioramas focusing on butterflies, moths and other insect life, as well as interactive games and competitions on social media.
The models were transported in bespoke wooden crates and built in-house by the carpentry workshop.
Ten Lego plants, including a Venus flytrap, a golden barrel cactus, a bird of paradise and water lilies, have also been created by another builder company, The Brick Guys.
Nate Dias, who was involved in the project, said: “There were a few challenges for us along the way; it’s not easy to make angular plastic bricks look like natural objects.
“Also, we had to make our Amazonica water lily float!”
Mr Dias and his partner Steve Guinness were the first winners of Channel 4’s Lego Masters.
He went on: “After pencil sketches, we drew some ideas on grid paper to get a better idea of how they might look in Lego. We made choices on what colours to use from the Lego colour palette. We then ordered lots of bricks, and got to work.
“The plants took around two months for two people to complete. They consist of around 40,000 bricks between all of the models.”
A Lego brick-making workshop will be held at the garden from February 16-24 to teach children the basics of building to enable them to forge their own creations.
