Fake foliage brings real pleasure

After seeing Adam Isaacs's bedroom terrace garden for the first time, you may think he is blessed with a green thumb. But you would be wrong.

True, the staghorn fern on the wall, the bromeliad below and the fountain grass and short green yucca ferns that surround the Balinese Buddha look particularly perky.

And his timber bamboo, split-leaf philodendron and red banana tree are full and lush. Ditto the red variegated succulents that are bursting the confines of their low-slung ceramic planter.

“It's all fake,'' the Los Angeles resident says, proud of his manicured garden, where every plant is always in its prime.

“Friends and clients tell me how beautiful my garden is — they have no idea it's not real,'' he says with a laugh.

Although Isaacs spends his life managing celebrities as a partner at the Endeavor talent agency in Beverly Hills, nurturing plants is another matter.

“I love to look at them but I've never been great with plants,'' he says.

“The huge pot with the Buddha was originally filled with water hyacinths. They would look good for a week but then rot and die.''

Busy schedule

At one point in his busy schedule, Isaacs did tend 15 phalaenopsis.

“The white orchids are my favourites. I spent every Saturday morning watering them, feeding them orchid food and caring for them. But it was just too much maintenance; I decided I would rather be doing yoga.''

Before going to London on a business trip, Isaacs called in a friend, florist George Woods, to take him up on a curious offer.

“He told me artificial plants looked amazingly real and asked me why I didn't do a 100 per cent faux-garden?'' Isaacs says.

Woods, former florist for Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles, says fake plants have gotten a bad rap.

“People consider them tacky but I think they have a lighthearted quality and are fun,'' Woods says. “I've always been fascinated by artificial plants.''

Woods had a week to track down the artificial plants and redo Isaacs's terrace. He installed the plantings in a single day.

“Faux plants are very lightweight and you don't have any dirt to deal with,'' explains the florist, who arranged the plants in the agent's existing containers, filling them with packing popcorn topped with a 2-inch-thick solid layer of plastic foam.

Coloured crushed glass, river rocks and sheet moss surround the plants' bases. The result is amazingly real.
Woods has two maxims:

“First, don't plant anything that wouldn't normally grow in the place you select. If it's January, don't fill your terrace with sunflowers. And secondly, you need to get hands-on with artificial plants.''

Lifelike forms

In an effort to make the faux plants appear as realistic as possible, Woods did just that — cutting, thinning, bending and folding them into lifelike simulations.

“If plants are too uniform, they look fake,'' he says. “Nature doesn't grow them that way.''

The artificial plants cost three times as much as real ones but Woods points out that they don't need to be tended and they won't die and need to be replaced. “They should look good for 10 to 15 years,'' he says.

And what does Isaacs think of his faux-foliage terrace?

“It's great,'' he says. “The plants look fantastic. All I have to do is dust them once in a while.''