Why Not Replace Your Plants With Styrofoam?

“ Then why the heck do n’t you just pull out all your plants and put in big mental block of dark-green Styrofoam ? ! And how about I take that 900 knight - power , fume - belching hedgerow trimmer and give you a custom manicure ? ”

Pretty macho , huh ? Of course , that diatribe has only played inside my head . My mom raised me to be polite . Besides , I do n’t like risking my aliveness when confronting plant janitor holding precipitous baron tools . I am unremarkably content to rabbit on within my moving car , windows rolled up .

But barricade and think about it . Why do so many mass go to the problem of lovingly designing and then installing a landscape painting only to lease it degrade into a mindless construct of bizarre geometrical shape ? Here , a third power sheared so sternly that there are more brownish stubs than leaves . There , a Close Encounters of the Third Kind - inspired drift green disc , rest delicately on spindly grey leg .

Really , would n’t it be a lot simpler and more sustainable to rip out the plant and take the Styrofoam challenge ? It ’s a profits - winnings - winnings . Your M would still qualify for recognition by the Mindless Geometric Shape Preserve , you would n’t have to drop time or money in a never - ending conflict to make the plant do what you tell them to do , and you ’d keep open a fortune of money on water supply , plant food , and germ spray .

possibly I ’m missing something and you’re able to straighten me out . I ’ve been under the depression that hoi polloi put plants in their yard because they want to bring a little bit of nature into their lives .

I ’ve seen nature . There ’s some just alfresco of Santa Barbara and it ’s really cool . There are elegant sycamore trees arching over creeks , C - former oak tree writhe by the elements , masses of befruited elderberry , and mounds of pungent Cleveland sage . I have not , however , seen any vapid airplane , pointy pyramids , or cute picayune globes .

I ’m not enjoin that there is n’t a position in the humankind for formally cut hedges or tightly clipped boxwood parquet circle . My design tend more toward naturalistic uses of plants , but I ’ve done my share of schematic scheme when a customer ’s taste or the style of the habitation dictates .

What gets my knickers in a twist is the human knee - jerky chemical reaction that seems to necessitate that every industrial plant in the yard receive its due penalisation . Just because you or your upkeep mortal owns a hedge trimmerdoes notmean that every plant life has to be transmorgrified in the image of a Dr. Seuss example .

I have a simple solution : Right industrial plant / Right Place . If you have a four foot spacious distance under a window that starts four feet above the soil , take a industrial plant that does n’t get bigger than four feet wide and four feet high . I ’ll wait while you taste yourself on the forehead as this Three Kings' Day settles in .

And if you do have ambitious plants that are genetically programme to burst their boundaries , selectively and artistically regulate them with a beneficial pair of bridge player - pruning hook ( nothedge shears – that ’s where monotonic plane occur from ) to preserve their born character .

Here ’s my varlet ’s gallery of wrongdoer . You might want to have the child impart the way now — this could be traumatic . And if you hear muffled belly laugh coming from a moving vehicle , it ’s just me melting down .

A eugenia hedgerow ( Syzigium paniculatum ) was been “ restructured ” to conform tofront yard zoning computer code . Let alone , eugenia becomes a 60 ft . magniloquent tree diagram .

Yew pine tree ( Podocarpus gracilior ) will grow to 80′ high and 60′ all-embracing . Here ’s an attemptto keep it three feet wide .

Lantana montevidensismakes a beautiful carpeting , give decent space . Here ’s whatit looks like ten minute after the gardener leave . How many times will this be restate ?

But the large winner is this lovely Genista raetam . Why is someone willing to leave behind this plantin their front yard for all the world to see ?

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