Fake flowers have become the scourge of the hotel industry

Artificial blooms are a feature of many luxury establishments, yet their green credentials are not all they seem

In London’s Southwark, a new restaurant, Glass Garden, takes you on a “forest escape”, according to its website. I ate there recently. The food was palatable but the forest was depressing: an acre of shiny, artificial greenery dangling from the ceiling. I hate fake anything, but fake flowers seem especially sad to me, reflecting a deep disconnect with nature.
There’s no poetry, no sweet scent or nectar for the bee. Flowers have been precious in our collective folk memory for centuries. Shakespeare knew that. What prettier lines are there in the English language than: “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine”?
I asked the restaurant manager why plastic plants were chosen. “It would be impossible to maintain real ones,” was his unapologetic reply.
The trend for fake foliage seems to be growing, partly fuelled by developments in manufacturing resulting in ever more realistic (and expensive) products. A fake (sorry, “faux”) orchid can retail for £100 or more. As a result, artificial blooms have morphed from being considered naff to becoming fashionable fodder for social media feeds. Countless swanky hotels are now festooned in what I believed to be an unequivocal environmental disaster, though it seems opinions on this are mixed.
I walked past The Kensington hotel in London recently, a five-star establishment within a Regency townhouse, and it was draped in fake wisteria. The hotel is certified by Green Tourism, a Perth-based organisation that suggests when it comes to floral arrangements, fresh flowers are the biggest environmental sin. “Cut flowers have the biggest carbon footprint,” says Andrea Nicholas, the company’s founder. “They are often transported by air from all parts of the world, using large amounts of water, fertilisers and pesticides, and have a very short shelf life.
“A better option is potted plants, as they can help with purifying the air, and live longer, although they will still require transporting and maintenance.” Bonus points go to businesses that grow their own flowers on-site, or use artificial flowers made from recycled plastic or natural materials. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has ruled in my favour though – in 2022, it banned all plastic and artificial flowers and grass from its shows.
Luxury florist Lavender Green Flowers decorates the new Mandarin Oriental Mayfair hotel, in real, scented blossoms. Babs Barnes, Lavender Green’s head of marketing, says: “The negative impact [of artificial flowers] on the environment must not be ignored. From the production process to disposal, faux flowers can contribute to plastic pollution, emit volatile organic compounds harmful to human health and end up in landfill.”
Of course, real flowers are not without associated plastic pollution either. Floral arrangements often make use of floristry foam (into which flower stems are poked), made from nasty chemicals (and also banned by the RHS).
Blooming Haus is a certified B Corp that supplies another recent high-end London opening, Raffles at The OWO. It has dispensed with floral foam, opting instead for chicken wire or discs of small wooden spikes, kenzan, used in Japanese flower arrangement. 
While the London-based business admits to having used artificial flowers in the past, “we have now transitioned away from them and advise our clients against,” opting for sustainably sourced flowers instead, says Jonathan Thorneycroft, Blooming Haus’s creative strategist. The 10-year-old company also “sources sustainable flowers which are tracked and monitored and have recognised certifications to ensure they are grown ethically and sustainably, compensating growers’ communities properly,” says Thorneycroft.
Real flowers need not be an extravagance. The Beacon in Tunbridge Wells is a small restaurant whose rooms are decorated with vases of freshly cut wild flowers picked from the grounds. “We have seven acres of land and three lakes so to use artificial plants would just be wrong,” says the co-owner Viv Cornwell. “We want to have real plants that are local and reflect the environment we are in.”
Other solutions include living walls, such as the 329-sq-metre (395-sq-yd) installation at London’s Athenaeum hotel opposite Green Park, featuring more than 12,000 plants, and the vast 8,000-sq-metre facade of Villa M in Paris. They not only look amazing – although some architects disagree – but encourage biodiversity, attracting insects and even birds to nest. Elsewhere in the capital, Hart Shoreditch hotel has utilised dried flowers.
In India, the Leela Palace hotels have launched a programme that sees the hotels’ floral arrangements made into incense sticks and cones by women from marginalised communities, with more than 10 tonnes of flower waste each year set to be repurposed.
Let’s stop this trend for extravagant faux arrangements before we’re engulfed. We need living plants around us, proven to benefit our well-being… unless, perhaps, you suffer from hay fever.