6 ways to use artificial plants in your home décor & landscaping

Flowers and greenery can make a home’s interior and exterior feel fresh and lively. Plants are the ideal decorating solution when a living space feels cold, sterile or impersonal. The downside is that real plants can be expensive and challenging for busy households to maintain. They take significant amounts of time to style, water and care for.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. Nowadays, artificial plants look lifelike enough to be appealing to households of every demographic. There are a bunch of reasons to consider decorating and landscaping with artificial plants:

• Do you live in a drought-prone area where watering plants has been banned or discouraged?
• Are you too busy to bother with watering dozens of houseplants?
• Do you live in an area with a too-short growing season or that’s too chilly to grow attractive flowers or trees?
• Is your balcony or backyard too shady for growing real flowers?
• Are you perplexed by the prospect of landscaping or decorating with real plants?

In all these situations, artificial plants could allow you to enjoy the beauty of flowers or greenery at home without the downsides that accompany living plants. Whether you’re decorating your home or landscaping it, artificial plants can be one of the smartest tools in your design scheme.

There are infinite ways to incorporate silk flowers, faux trees, man-made greenery and AstroTurf into your home and garden. Let’s look at six of the most popular and attractive ways to incorporate artificial plants in your home décor and landscape.

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1. Hang potted faux ferns & place houseplants in spots where real ones wouldn’t thrive.

Many residences lack the amount of light necessary to keep real houseplants happy and healthy- but placement doesn’t matter if you choose to decorate with their artificial counterparts. Place planters filled with artificial plants on bookcases, in bare corners and bathrooms. Many of these houseplant styling tips work for silk plants as well as real ones.

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2. Invest in several seasonal wreaths for a welcoming front door year round.

If you buy wreaths comprised of real flowers and greenery, replacements will enrich your florist but drain your own bank account every season. Instead, turn to artificial wreaths as a long-term investment that’s likely to pay for itself over time.

If you purchase a spring and summer-friendly floral wreath, an autumn themed wreath and a winter themed wreath, all comprised of silk plants, you can rotate between the three as the seasons change. That way your front door décor will always be pretty and timely.

3. Add potted faux trees flanking the home’s entrance.

Potted trees can beautify a home’s entrance, lending vitality and charm to the entryway. The faux version is ideal for use in situations where there isn’t adequate space for real trees to spread their roots and flourish. It isn’t typically ideal for real trees to be growing close enough to a home that the roots would interfere with the building’s foundation, plumbing or electrical systems.

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4. Place silk flower arrangements in your living spaces.

Flower arrangements are the secret to making your home décor look much more luxurious than it really is. If you can afford to splurge on realistic silk flower arrangements, they’ll give your decorating scheme a polished look that’s also low-maintenance. If your budget is small, you can get a similar look by buying high-quality faux flowers but arranging them yourself. There are many excellent tutorials online that can help you with this.

Try this stunning faux peony arrangement made from inexpensive craft supplies or this summertime display for the mantelpiece.

Tip: You can combine artificial flowers with real greenery in your floral arrangements and pot plants. This gives you some of the advantages of both real and silk flora.

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5. Incorporate an artificial plant wall into your patio or living room.

A plant wall could make the difference between a ho-hum patio garden and one that looks spectacular. This idea works for livening up garden and living spaces of any size. To fill large areas, we suggest using multiple panels of different artificial plants.

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6. Use artificial grass in your landscape design.

Using artificial plants is one of many ways to guarantee your landscaping is as low-maintenance as possible. One trendy way to achieve this is to install artificial grass. Some of the advantages of artificial grass are:

• No mowing is necessary, which saves time and fuel.
• No worries over whether the lawn is receiving adequate water, thus lowering your water bills and irrigation setup and running costs.
• No wilting issues, so the lawn will always look green and fresh.

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When you’re landscaping, and decorating your home, these six ideas will save valuable maintenance time. Not only that, as compared against the exorbitant sums you’d spend on real flowers and greenery, these ideas will help you avoid having to make significant ongoing investments in your décor and landscaping efforts. Considering the advantages, we think it’s worth considering the use of artificial plants in your home décor and landscape.

If you do want to brave the natural house plant and landscaping route here are the best hard to kill indoor plants and our guide to starting a veggie patch.