How to build a LEGO modular building park with a retiring set

A retiring LEGO Icons model is a great first step towards adding a satisfying park to your LEGO modular building display, providing a welcome green space on the street.

Before 10359 Fountain Garden retires this July, there's an extra use for the miniature garden that is worth considering, and it requires relatively few changes to the layout of the build. LEGO Icons 10359 Fountain Garden is currently available for £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99 with 1,302 pieces. It's part of the Gardens of the World range, which continued earlier this year with 11372 Autumn Cottage Garden.

It's intended to be a tabletop display of an outdoor garden space, complete with a tiered fountain, lavabo, and decorative tiled pathways. You can check out our review of the official design by clicking here, but the set is practically destined to be a modular park.

While it's not designed for minifigures, the base model of 10359 Fountain Garden is big enough to comfortably accommodate them – but the raised base means they have no way to get up there naturally, leaving them looking out of place. The online LEGO community has been quick to address this, turning the retiring Icons set into a modular park with several designs to choose from.

For this feature, I turned to cmiddleton's design for its fewer additional parts but satisfying modular appearance. All of the required extra elements were available on Pick a Brick, but the provided parts list features a few minor errors. I've updated the piece list in the following file, but you'll still need the free instructions from their Rebrickable page. This parts list does not include a 32x32 stud baseplate, since it's more affordable to purchase 11023 Green Baseplate than getting one on Pick a Brick.

The extra pieces and a single 11023 Green Baseplate make up an additional £23.74, on top of the £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99 needed for 10359 Fountain Garden. That's a total of £113.73 for everything, although you can bring the cost down considerably by picking up the Garden on sale (for example, you can currently score it at Zavvi for only £62.99).

Before you start building, I'd recommend sorting pieces from only the first seven bags out while you assemble the base of the garden, as the fan-made instructions follow the official steps later on in the model.

Cmiddleton's model looks suitably elegant when put together, featuring a bench just outside the garden and the usual lamppost. There's even some alley space behind the garden to continue any backstreets you have in your LEGO city. The colour of the baseplate you pick will be visible from the back, as it is with most official modular buildings. I've used a dark blue variant, simply because they were on sale at the end of 2025 and I had some spare.

This custom refit of 10359 Fountain Garden takes away the ability to rearrange the larger sections with the arches around the central fountain, sitting them stoically at the back of the build. This serves to frame the garden in a modular street, and steps are seamlessly integrated to offer minifigures an easy and natural way to access the garden from the pavement.

It's only then that you can truly appreciate the beauty of this build and the intricate printing used for the tiles, just as minifigures will in the middle of their busy days. The garden even manages to retain some of its customisation, as the plants can still be freely rearranged around the garden as you see fit. Whether you want the cypress trees to sit at the back of the model or further at the front is entirely up to you.

It's only the arch sections that are static compared to the official set. You'll need to move the roof sections half a stud closer towards the fountain to ensure that they don't intersect with the sides of buildings next to the garden. The only other amendment that you'll need to consider is moving the Technic pin connector pieces back two studs, provided you use that system in your street.

Otherwise, it's almost like 10359 Fountain Garden was made to be a modular LEGO park. It's not like 10362 French Café, where the furniture feels far too big compared to minifigures. Only the stone bench feels oversized here, but you can always consider that to be a table instead. By using the medium nougat base of the official garden design as walls facing the street and alley, it allows this set to elegantly transition from a standalone display to the next addition to your LEGO city.

All that said, how does this model actually look next to official modular buildings? I had 10255 Assembly Square and 76218 Sanctum Sanctorum on hand to demonstrate, and the modular fountain garden intentionally breaks up the natural flow of the street by adding a green space between buildings. It allows you to appreciate a side of the buildings that you rarely see, though older models aren't quite as clean on their sides.

The garden works well in adding a green space and some respite in a crowded street scene, but it serves an additional purpose for those who arrange their modular buildings like city blocks. The open nature of the garden lets you see the back of the buildings, which would usually be almost completely obscured. This opens up some storytelling potential by adding scenes that will be visible in your city on the back of a building, rather than just the front.

With its retirement currently scheduled for July 2026, time is quickly running out to pick up 10359 Fountain Garden, and it has been consistently discounted in recent months. All of the necessary parts to modularise the official set are available right now on Pick a Brick, and the finished build fits well into any kind of modular display.

LEGO modular buildings in general would benefit from more green spaces. They understandably focus on the building aspect of cities more, rather than any kind of gardens, save for the odd rooftop greenhouse – but provided you can accommodate a break in the busy street scene, this modular park is well worth adding to your city, without breaking the bank as much as a normal building would.

This copy of 10359 Fountain Garden was provided by the LEGO Group for the purposes of this feature.

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