Fixing My Black Thumb Once and For All

This past weekend, John and I made the big trek from Virginia all the way out to Iowa for some important meetings as well as some much needed out-of-town down time. We explored the downtown area and ate at all kinds of delicious restaurants. We also made it out to the Iowa State Fair but that’s an entire story in and of itself…

We also spent some time at the Botanical Gardens, which popped up time and time again as a must-see Des Moines attraction. While there, I was practically drooling over the range of tropical plants and succulents—so. many. succulents. Ultimately though, all it did was make me realize just how black my green thumb was. So, as soon as we got home, I came up with a solution to fix it once and for all.

Yup. I went faux.

Now I know a lot of people are highly against the idea of silk flowers, but I’m all for it. I’m just too much of a floral fan and have too FEW of those gardener genes, so I’ll take what I can get. And if that means incorporating some immortal impostors here and there, I’ll take it. One of the few remaining live plants that we have in the house is pictured above—in all its lonely glory. It was just an inconspicuous grassy potted plant that I had picked up at the local nursery, but it was looking thinner and thinner by the day.

So I decided to fill in the open real estate with some faux succulents purchased from our local craft store. The great thing about succulents is that they look so picture perfect and plastic-y in their natural state, that it’s almost (almost!) difficult to spot a fake.

Now admittedly, I should probably have removed the last of my grassy plant because he looks a touch out of place amongst that low litter of succulents, but I didn’t have the heart to kill him once and for all. So he’ll struggle on amidst his new silent friends until his fated demise under my care.

Do you guys ever use faux plants?