Are Plastic or Artificial Flowers Bad?

In cities across the world, fake flowers have gone from a common fixture in funeral parlors to a must-have for trendy shops, bars, and restaurants. Wall-mounted plastic blooms, once seen as “tacky” and “vulgar,” are now considered chic, a trend accelerated by the pandemic. With fresh flowers in short supply and stylists scrambling, artificial blooms filled the void. Now, years later, they’re everywhere.  

 

Why Did Plastic Flowers Come Back?

COVID-19 is to blame – or at least, part of it. As the availability of real flowers dwindled during the pandemic, fake ones took their place. 

The connotations of fake flowers – dusty, maudlin, gathering cobwebs on kitchen tables – started to fade when real blooms were hard to get. To the chagrin of gardeners, faux flowers have now shed their tacky image, no longer deemed as an obscene mockery of life. Faux flowers have cropped up everywhere, in beauty salons, hairdressers, and even florists. Yes, florists are selling plastic plants. As sales grow at places like Tesco and Amazon, it’s clear that artificial flowers are slowly creeping into the domestic sphere as well.

The Myth of “Eco-Friendly” Faux Flowers

Most gardeners would agree that fake flowers are, in fact, trash. Viewed as ersatz copies, they conceptually lack the beauty inherent in nature, like a caricature of a character that the audience no longer resonates with. Artificial flowers are forever, but not in the way that you’d want them. Even high-end fake flowers do not biodegrade easily, despite claims to the contrary. They’re eventually destined for the landfill, and the plastic industries that produced them have polluted waterways, caused chemical leaching, and overburdened landfills with toxins. 

Many artificial flower sellers tout the longevity of their flowers as a selling point, but that is misleading in many ways. Most people don’t want artificial flowers, gathering dust and tear, to fill their homes decades on end, without change. 

Artificial Flower Cons: 

• May contain harmful chemicals including petrochemicals 

• Produced in factories with poor working conditions, involving long-distance shipping that contribute to substantial carbon emissions and fuel pollution 

• Limited aesthetic appeal, can appear as eyesores 

• Contributes to large-scale contamination and languishes in landfills for centuries 

Are Fake Plants Bad Feng Shui?

Many people believe that fake plants are bad feng shui, and there’s some merit to that idea. Feng shui, an ancient Chinese philosophy that hinges upon the arrangement of décor and furniture to achieve harmony, is all about cultivating positive energy, and live plants are considered embodiments of growth and vitality. Flourishing during the Zhou dynasty, early feng shui beliefs reflected the interconnectedness of nature with the heavens, a concept tied to the belief that the heavens gave rise to the immortals in Chinese mythology. At its core, the purpose of feng shui is to attract good fortune and good health. 

Plants are vital components in feng shui, acting as conduits for positive energy. Fake plants, on the other hand, are inert, “dead” objects that lack the natural life force that is said to attract good chi. They are said to attract fakeness into your life – fake friendships and gossips that are on par with Eleanor from the Good Place before she became less horrible. 

If nothing in your life seems to be going well, you can probably heap the blame on the sad bouquet of fake flowers sitting on your tabletop. Even if you do not adhere to the belief of feng shui, it’s advisable to keep fake plants at a minimum – or none at all – because there are many other better décor options. 

Are Real Flowers Really Good?

On the surface, a bouquet of real, lush flowers seems inviting, but the cut flower industry, like most commercial industries, has its own set of problems when no longer viewed through a rosy lens. However, even though the reality of the flower industry is abhorrent, that doesn’t mean fake flowers have their place under the sun. 

Fresh Flower Cons:

• Flowers consume large quantities of water, causing high levels of chemical runoff 

• Short, ephemeral lifespan 

• Workers living in destitute regions are being exploited, with arduous working conditions and low wages

• Process inadvertently exposes workers and local communities to toxic chemicals from fertilizers, pesticides, and preservatives

• Overuse of water resources and chemical contamination in nearby environments disrupts ecosystems  

Effortless Alternatives for the Lazy

With both sides of the equation under fire, what is the answer? For gardening enthusiasts, the answer is glaringly obvious – grow real flowers. But real plants can seem like a lot of work. To make the process of growing more amenable, there are a vast ensemble of tools that allow you to bring gardening indoors: tiered grow lights, indoor planters, and seed-starting kits. Houseplants, some of which carry blooms, are the kind that you can set down and forget. With ever-evolving technology that makes growing herbs on your countertop as easy as making coffee, the excuse of not wanting to engage with living plants sounds lame. And even if you can’t, a lack of fake greenery isn’t the end of the world – you’ll live.