I found this bit of news - but as a hard core gardener was a little appalled by it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cumbria/6459605.stm

Oh that is pathetic.

Perhaps I ought to plant some fake flowers in my garden, cover the soil in dark polythene and put green carpet down for lawn. It will make for low maintenance.

My daffodils in this new place are still not blooming although on the hillside nearby near the highway, they've bloomed and are almost over with.
We have a tourist destination in California's gold mining foothills called Daffodil Hill and I think they'll have a hard time maintaining the daffodils for all the tourists.

I don't put up fake flowers but my mother made some ornamental bird house type stands with kind of stele painting on them for those times when nothing it blooming.

My camellias are still blooming all over though and, the tulips are up and won't be long to fade away.

i used to love seeing all the daffodils in the Lake District, especially at Rydal Church and Grasmere. OK sometimes they were early, sometimes they were late - but at least they were all real. Fake ones? Sheesh, Wordsworth must be turning in his grave. Hope they haven't put any fake ones near his grave in Grasmere churchyard. And anyway surely they have better things to spend their money on??

The lake district has had its troubles making a living. When we visited, they'd had a rough spring with the scares of foot and mouth disease in livestock. People were not coming up for Spring weekends that year.

Alllrighty! If people are going there to see the spring flowers it doesn't seem right to travel to see fakes. And if they're there anyway and don't see a flower in spring they'll probably be happy enough with the "it's been a mild winter an they all came out early" reason. Just don't know why they'd bother

As they are quite happy passing fakes off as real then we should pay any entrance fees with fake money

That's the ticket, SOTHC. Remember to fetch more ink on your way down to the basement.

Having spent my honeymoon in the Lake District in a wet, cold and windy October I don't know why they were worrying; it is stunningly beautiful anyway at any time of year.

People who want to see real daffodils in England should have come round here. In shadier places there are still some in bloom, and many trees still aren't in leaf yet.

When I was a child, my relatives overseas requested that my mother send a photo of our new house and garden. So my mother did this (planted fake flowers in the garden) just so she'd obtain a nice picture to send to the relatives. Of course you couldn't tell the difference in a photo.