Fabulously Faux-Blooming Artificial Plants.
As someone who travels extensively with work, and has a husband who tends to be a little forgetful when it comes to watering plants (I don’t mind too much, at least he remembers to feed the children), I’m a big advocate of having a few artificial plants around my home. I’ve waxed lyrical about the benefits of bringing the outside in throughout a number of blog posts, and having a house filled with greenery has real benefits in helping to reduce stress levels, increase happiness and aid productivity.
While natural plants have a huge range of benefits too; air cleaning, keeping the air temperature down, reducing airbourne dust levels, and reducing carbon dioxide, you cannot get away from the fact that they need regular watering and light to survive.
Given the number of plant fatalities we have had over the years, I tend to keep a mix of artificial and real plants; this way I get the benefit of real plants but also the beauty of a lasting artificial plant that requires no maintenance at all. It also means that it does not cost me too much to replace the occasional real plant loss.
When Blooming Artificial approached me to try their artificial plants in my home, I jumped at the chance to add more greenery, for the reasons I have written about above.
Blooming Artificial are the number 1 UK retailer of artificial plants, flowers and trees at affordable prices. They buy directly from suppliers and choose the most realistic from the most experienced. Artificial plants and flowers have come a long way from the 70’s versions which were obviously faux, and are now incredible realistic and of a high quality, something that Blooming Artificial pride themselves on.
You can shop Blooming Artificial through the link below.
Here, and in the top image, you can see the Areca Palm 160cm on its own and next to a real plant. Had you not known which one was faux, would you be able to tell the difference?
By far the biggest challenge with buying artificial plants, is will they look real enough in your home? There are a large range of different artificial plants that you can buy, but I always come back to how do they look and how easy is it to tell the difference between real and artificial. I’d like mine to be as real as possible (whilst recognising that they cannot be perfect because they are not……real), but I also have to remember that when my husband does remember to water the plants, he also tends to water my artificial plants too. None-the-less, I will take the chance of an occasional mistake for a beautiful and realistic artificial plant that will last.
The beauty about Blooming Artificial is they stock a large variety of plants and trees for indoors and out. When I buy a statement plant, I always tend to buy artificial because the cost difference is relatively small but you know that when splashing out, the artificial plant will survive and your money is not disappearing down the drain.
The Areca Palm, which is 160cm in height is a great example of a statement plant, which you can see above in my bay window, I have a few others throughout the blog post. In the image above you can see a close up of the plant, which looks incredibly realistic. The base of the plant is also very solid, so there is no chance of it falling over, something I have found in the past when buying larger artificial plants.
Here you can see the Musa Banana Tree 180 cm which is a fantastic height for a statement plant. The tree trunk is textural to touch, important for adding a sense of realness to the artificial plant. Due to it’s size, I would recommend planting it in a pot and securing the base. Of all the plants, this one tended to be the one to topple over, given its height.
With a wide range of plants, you don’t need to “go large” with Blooming Artificial. Here I have chosen the Rubber Plant to sit in my fireplace and below the Boston Fern sits on a table in the window. There is no less attention to detail with the smaller plants than the larger ones.
My favourite plant is the Parlour Palm 120cm which you can see in these images. It does come in larger sizes but all were sold out (at the time of ordering), most likely due to the fact it is a favourite of quite a few of you. The detail on this plant is incredible and it fills this window space really well. It has a really lush feeling to it, with lots of different individual branches and leaves. In the detailed shot, you can see just how realistic this plant is.
For my final indoor plant choices, I picked up the two hanging plants which you can see in my guest bedroom; Hanging Fiscus Pumila and Hanging Asparagus . We really struggle with real hanging plants in our household, I think because they are out of the line of sight, and therefore they tend to be the last to receive any water. These two plants are a great size for this hanging space, as they are small. Larger hanging plants tend to swamp out the other items hanging from this shelf and they also tend to drip water on the velvet bed below, something I’m really not a fan of (velvet and water tends to lead to stains).
Outdoor Plants.
I generally have a lot more success with outdoor plants than indoor ones, most probably because they get watered when it rains. However, one area that does not fare so well is by the front door, which has a porch roof covering it and therefore the rain does not get to the plants on my door step. They are also in pots, which require much more water than plants in the ground.
Therefore like indoor plants, artificial plants for my door step make a lot of sense. Here, I chose the Boxwood Tree 180 cm, a single ball tree. The stem is made of natural wood, helping to give a sense of realness to the tree. I chose the largest size because I wanted to make a statement on the opposite side of the door to my climbing roses. I guess you could also choose two trees, perhaps slightly smaller in size for both sides of the door.
I styled these photos while my children were out of the house, and while I think these plants are incredibly realistic, I decided to put them to the test and asked the children to identify which plants in our house were real and which artificial, without touching the plants. While they did pick out one or two of the artificial plants as faux, they also picked out my real fiddle fig too. They thought the boxwood tree was real and both of the palms, along with the rubber plant.
So all in all, the artificial plants fared very well for realness.
This is a paid partnership but all opinion are my own and I have only chose items that I would buy for myself.
A list Blooming Artificial plants used in this blog post:
