My name is Justin and I kill plants.
There. I confess. Actually I’m not a floracidial maniac. I don’t bear a grudge against aphalandra squarosa louisae (in fact I used to have one) and I have nothing personally against rubber plants. I just can’t keep them alive. It doesn’t matter if they are in the house or the garden, in flower beds or tubs, almost everything I plant dies even if I follow the instructions and water regularly or sparsely, feed or don’t feed, talk to them or ignore them. They. Just. Die. Sometimes spectacularly fast. before I have even got them in the ground. I put the tubs of stuff that I’ve just bought down, make coffee, go back to them and they have withered visibly. I have visions that one day I will be driving home from the garden centre with some bedding plants and my car door will open and they will leap out in a suicidal act like lemmings over a cliff rather than come home with me. Yes it’s that bad. If green fingers means good with plants then I have long, blood red horticultural stabbing claws. You don’t stand a chance little plants.
My wife is not much better. She gives them more love and her intentions are admirable but things just die. So we do artificial. That’s what we do. Our bathroom looks wonderful but it is all fake trailing ivy and little bushy green things that are so robust you could probably clean the toilet with them. Our offices are havens of green with towering IKEA shrubbery encrusted with fairy lights. Even our fireplace in the front room has hand made orange paper buds that you plug in and they glow from the inside. Incidentally we bought that lot in Camden Market from a man who I can only describe as deeply disturbed who more or less said that he wanted to kill his old school teachers, which is far worse than killing plants.
According to the Encyclopaedia of World Problems and Human Potential (yes there really is such a thing) “Tens of millions of plants are killed by and for human beings every year. They are dug up, cut down, burned, poisoned, mutilated, starved and deprived of water and sunlight for the sole purpose of benefiting humankind. While this may be necessary for the continuance of the species, it is done without regard for the plants, without conscience and without consciousness.” That really is thought provoking. I’m thinking of Saruman in Lord of the Rings cutting down the trees to fuel his furnaces having gone over to the way of the Evil Eye.
Anyway, on the grounds that every solution brings its own problems a la the law of unintended consequences, I have solved the problem of plant killing by having artificial plants but have created two new problems in the wake of this one. The first is of course the environmental damage done from having fake plants that are made of plastic and add to the world’s problems in that area. However I am re-assured that there is a positive side to this. In the course of researching this issue I came across Sean who runs a website called My Almost Green Thumb. He too was guilty of plant-slaughter in his youth but has achieved a balance between the artificial and the real after many years of careful experimentation and makes many positive environmental arguments for faking it. His latest blog is entitled Reasons a Hindu Rope Plant Should Be Part of Your Home or Office Décor. That is so whacky and wonderful that I liked the guy straight away. Take a look at his site, it’s a huge source of inspiration. You’ll find it at
https://www.myalmostgreenthumb.com
However there is another issue about artificial plants that is perceptual and I suspect personal to me and my slightly twisted way of looking at the world. I can only call it Stepford Plant syndrome. You will have heard of the Stepford Wives. Ira Levin’s novel has been filmed twice in 1975 and 2004 and it basically describes a community where the women are all perfect and docile and cause no problems for their husbands because they have been turned into passive automatons. I fear that artificial plants reflect badly on me as I too am guilty of being controlling and wanting to create something perfect that does not exist in nature.
I am probably being a little harsh on myself. But there is one last thing that occurs to me and that is that you can’t really talk to artificial plants. I mean they are plastic. Or something else inert. There is no therapy to be had in that. Fortunately I have two cats who are very good conversationalists but maybe one day I will have to take another look at real plants. I hate to think of my ramblings falling on deaf leaves.
Eyecatching 