That's cute! At least she is trying to add some color to the yard, but I know the feeling!

I drove by a house once that had a rose bush covered in large beautiful pink blooms at a strange time of year. I went back around and got out to see that someone had very realistically wired pink silk roses to the rose bush.

A non gardening friend of mine has silk caladiums in her front yard. I told her I was going to come by and pull them all up and hide them at the first frost. Then she could put them back in the spring. She wasn't amused. Oh well ...

Happy flower gardening -- any way you want to do it!

your right, it does brighten up the place,

even tho i'm a rank beginner, and have been for
many years now, i still have great success with
easy stuff like petunias, and such

i sort of avoid her, as she's got these two
evil dogs that weigh about 2 pounds but THINK
they weigh about 30 pounds, you know the type?

and she likes to let them out around 4 am for their
morning poo poo, which in turn they bark like mad
to wake up the entire park, which, in turn
pisses me off

LOL

anyway, i guess one thing is right, at least they
are preaty even if plastic

tesa

I have a neighbor down the street whose home & property is perfectly maintained.
Tidy & neat.
But with lots and lots of plastic flowers all over the place.
Some times I hear people groan about their home-owners associations, but I sometimes wish our neighborhood had one.
They could put restraints on the madness.

Randy

At least they are new. I thought Ike would wash out the ones down the street that have been there at least 25 years but they are still hanging in.
YUCK!
Tally HO!

Last time I went to my mother-in-law's house, she proudly showed off her new hot-pink silk roses. At least she has something in those nice urns outside the front entryway âº

Pam

i guess its sort of a love hate relationship isn't it?

i just think the combination is funny, water lillies
with hydrangeas, and blue hibiscus and such

oh,and the orange mums

along the same note, i was at my moms yesterday, and
i noticed my mom had this beautiful arrangement on
her entertainment center, but it was wrapped in sarhan
wrap! i said "mom, what's up with the plastic wrap
on the flowers?", she said "well, i dont want them to
get dusty, i know how you hate that"

i couldn't help but smile

tesa

I have beautiful real flower beds & trees, but....
I have 2 urns on either side of the garage that make a rusty mess on my driveway with real plants in them. I finally put silk greenery in them which I change a couple times a year. Down by the lake I have 4 really big pots with good soil in them that I tried perennials & annuals in...at night something eats them, so now they get new silk flowers every year. I also have 3 hanging pots on my back patio that I plant seasonally with annuals. I'm thinking about switching over to silk, so I don't have to water them every day in the summer.
I know it's tacky, but a couple other neighors suppliment their yards with silk too, so I don't feel too "dorky" doing it! Shame, shame on me!

One home on a neighboring street also has artificial flowers. It's not my style. It's not my home, either. Not my monkeys, not my circus. For all I know, the owners might hate my front yard, but I have never heard that from them.

Definitely not an issue worth getting into trouble with a neighbor. Particularly a neighbor with two dogs.

I love silk foliage plants in the house! In one house we had a huge bedroom with vaulted ceilings. The closet was 8 ft. tall and there was like a shelf on top. I bought some gorgeous huge silk foliage plants and put them all along the top of the long closet. When Bob saw the plants he said "Just how do you think you are going to water them?"

I said, "Oh, no problem -- I'll run a hose from the bathroom!

"Arrrrrggggg!" I let him stew a while before I told him the truth. :-)

I now have them in this house and about twice a year take them outside and squirt them with the hose. Been doing it for years and it has never hurt them.

Plus I have a few exotics that I play around with outside. I just put some photos on the Texas Gallery if you'd like to see them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Winter exotic garden ...

this is so funny, but just this day, i saw a house
with them, and for the first time, it actually looked
good!

my friend said her neighbor changes them out with the
seasons, and she said, you should see her mums in the
fall!

now thats more like it

i guess, if you could sort of work within what nature would
be doing at a specific time, that would work too

anyway, it really did look good, i was impressed

tesa

Ah yes...my mother and her black thumb is also very proud of her fake flowers stuck in the dirt. Completely tacky IMO.

Although, I have to confess I've always thought the little plastic animals were also very tacky. Til yesterday when my little girl became fascinated w/ some she found in a neighbors yard. So now I'm actually contemplating buying some little fake hummers on a stick and fake bunnies! Maybe I can hide them in the backyard where they can be my dirty little secret! haha

Tesa, I can lend you my dog. She always has wanted to eat those little snack on a string things.

One of my neighbors celebrated the opening of the dollar store by buying 2 of everything and sticking it, price tags and all, into the top of her cyclone fence. Daffodils, hydrangeas, plastic bunnies, it's all there in glorious technicolor. And then she spread a LOT of plastic eggs across the dirt front yard.
Tally HO!

thats funny!

i must admit, i do have a few gnomes, a friend gave
them to me, and i do like them

i also have a wee fairy, again, a gift for my meditation
garden

i actually love those tacky pink flamingos, BUT, i'll
only buy them when i have my koi pond installed, which,
at the rate we're goin', might be sometime in the year
2012, but i think they look kinda fun by a pond

tesa

Just food for thought here. Some of the people using artificial flowers probably don't know the difference between a daisy and a zinnia, much less when they bloom and under which conditions. The 'flowers' are likely chosen for their color âº

Oh my, Tally! That calls for a picture to be submitted to the local paper as 'what not to do' âº

Pam

at least she doesn't have pink flamegoes lol!

This is how someone did it a couple of blocks over from me. Click on thumbnail to enlarge:

roselee, i gotta say, thats one of the nicer displays
i've seen

a friend of mine, just last week or so, found these
beautiful urns at an estate sale, and wants me to help
her make a display

i suggested she use greenry, vs flowers, as over time,
your neighbors are just gonna know, after about a year,
that those flowers are fake, but if you stick with green
plastic foliage things, then who will know??

i think she's goona go for it

so tomorrow, we're gonna go to hobby lobby, and check out
their selections

tesa

urn design update

my friend and i hit a few places to purchase green
foliage type silk plants

she got a few spikey things for the tall elements
and some ivy to cascade over the sides

my digital camers has no more memory, i really
need to download some photos, to free up space

they look really nice next to her door

i'm inpressed

tesa

well, I must also confess when one of the hoity toity suburbs here passed a law against having pink flamingos in your yard, I thought it was pretty funny when a business just outside their jurisdiction bought 200 pink flamingos and stuck them out front. Now it's a seasonal thing...they have penguins in the winter, turkeys in the fall.

I may find some things tacky, but I destest HOA's who want to dictate everything about your house and yard's appearance.

roselee, you are SO BAD making him think those were real plants.
Tally how in heck do you achieve a dirt lawn where you are? Napalm? I've been trying to kill the sod in my hellstrip since August and we get less water. I mail her some more eggs for her secret. (Unless it involves flamables or smothering with appliances.)
ROFL maden!!!
We have a lady a neighborhood over that has the perfectly sculpted grass and tree with a different color plasic flower display for each season on a big hanging plant display.The flowers look fake. The display rack is REALLY pretty. The rest of everything else is stark *ss white. The house is brick with bright white trim, the display wrought iron is bright white,the fence is bright white the cars are bright white and anything else around is bright white. It looks like a movie set.
Thier neighbors are hoarders. Half done projects,random plantings and just crap is EVERYWHERE even spilling over the fence. It's startling to see the two next to eachother. I'll bet that hoarder house makes Mrs. "White" crazynuts. I can just see her in her (?) bright white kitchen sipping on tea out of a floral mug (that matches the fake flowers exactly)trying to resist throwing a match over the fence. PJ

PJ, that hoarder neighbor probably thinks Mrs. White is the tacky one too. Last summer I let some of my native grass grow in the very back of my backyard (I have an acre) so it would go to seed and spread. I actually liked the way it looked, but my neighbors must have hated it. They mentioned in a joking way several times that they would lend me their lawnmower and later I found out that they were really angry about it. Then, I decided to let it stay all winter. Mind you, this is at the very back of my backyard, so it is even further beyond their backyard, and our backyards are separated by a chain link fence.

My view of their backyard is a huge burnpile loaded with branches, old furniture, carboard boxes, etc. and piled against the back of their garage is a huge pile of junk. Until now, I never complained to them or about their trashy backyard. My solution is to plant the fastest growing shrubbery I can find.