The flowers are fake? That's cheating!

Driving by neighbors' houses, I notice flower beds and window boxes brilliant with color. But upon closer inspection during a walk around my neighborhood, I spot a peculiar perfection in one yard, the kind that nature doesn't produce. Fake flowers!

I'm both outraged and intrigued. The fiery red geraniums near the edge of the walkway have a genuine air about them, though the telltale signs are flawlessness and uniformity -- no brown leaves or withered petals, same-sized blossoms. Perhaps only a gardener would recognize the impostor plant. Or care.

With the gardening season well underway, landscapes across Long Island are bursting into bloom. But are the blooms real or bogus?

At my Bellmore hair salon, dramatically tall floral arrangements in sleek glass vases impart a Manhattan-meets-Hampton vibe. In a bouquet of French tulips -- the oversized, tall variety, standing slim, strong and elegant -- I detect an oddity in its symmetry. Each leaf is "growing" from the same height on every stem.

"Are they real?" I asked.

"No," said the woman behind the counter, with an impish grin, "but don't they look great?"

Yes. But it's cheating. Artificial flowers are the gardening equivalent of steroids in baseball.

I could be persuaded to look the other way when it comes to imitation flowers indoors -- perhaps they're the solution to a decorating challenge or an attempt to chase away the winter blues -- but they have to be high-quality, fabulous forgeries. My beef is with artificial plants in yards. If you're gonna go faux, keep it inside. Grow the real deal outdoors. It's not cool to fake Mother Nature.

And yet an entire industry of doing just that has sprouted up in stores and catalogs. Lifelike topiaries that never need pruning are proudly promoted as better than real. Hanging baskets of nearly natural bougainvillea have nonstop blooms. Easy-to-wash wisteria. Stop the insanity! I'm waiting to see a giant Keebler elves tree shoot up overnight on my street.

Phony flowers bring to mind the "I Love Lucy" episode in which the beloved redhead accidentally drives a lawn mower through rival Betty Ramsey's prized tulips. Lucy substitutes waxed versions to ensure her neighbor's win in the next day's flower show. But an unrelenting sun melts the replacements just as the judge is about to award first prize, exposing Lucy's faux pas.

Neither sun nor rain will hurt today's plastic and polyester flowers. Manufacturers unabashedly market their flora as "weather-resistant" and the paradoxical "water-resistant," ensuring blooms throughout Armageddon. They're products, not plants.

What precipitated this niche business? An inability to garden? Laziness? The desire for perfection? And do the not-quite-gardeners accept praise without admission?

The other night when Billy, my boyfriend, came home, he had a small blue hydrangea in his hand as he walked down the driveway.

"It's gorgeous!" I exclaimed, still a few yards away.

"I got it at Ikea," he said.

"Ikea?"

"It's fake!" he said, handing me the suspiciously lightweight shrub. "Doesn't it look real?"

It really did.

"Where do you want to put it?"

"Inside," I said with a grin. No fakes in my flower beds.