Creating a Backyard Oasis with Artificial Plants for Around the Pool

TL;DR: Designing with plants around the pool can transform a basic backyard feature into a resort-style oasis that feels lush, private, and inviting. This blog shows how artificial greenery elevates poolscapes with style, comfort, and zero maintenance.

• Use faux greenery to add lush texture and contrast against pool blues and hardscapes
• Create subtle privacy with structured plants like hedge walls and topiaries
• Choose artificial plants for a low-maintenance, always-polished look
• Incorporate tropical and sculptural varieties for a vacation-inspired vibe
• Add personality with colorful flowers and flexible planter arrangements

For those who crave resort-style luxury, a pool can be a veritable oasis in your home. As an enviable feature of high-end homes the world over, a pool represents the epitome of indulgence: a statement feature serving no purpose for the home other than pure enjoyment.

However, as a distinct focal point for a luxury home, pools require considered design touches to elevate from an aesthetic afterthought into something more cohesively pleasing to the eye. And no touch might be quite as distinct as carefully selected and high-end greenery, placed just so.

Here, we have assembled some of our designer-inspired tips for designing a poolscape with plants around the pool for maximum visual impact. With these design notes taken into consideration, readers who yearn for an escape akin to what you might find at a far-flung Four Seasons location will be able to craft a poolside space that offers a relaxing and beautiful escape from the everyday.

Adding Lushness

By their nature, pools tend to be fairly sterile spaces. Yes, the rippling and sparkling water can add a touch of visual intrigue to an indoor space or backyard alike. But beyond decorative tilework, a pool and its surrounding space tends to be utilitarian, with the open space above a pool nearly impossible to decorate and its surrounding flattop generally empty for safety’s sake. A pool is, traditionally, a space to be used rather than savored.

However, with thoughtful selections of greenery surrounding your pool, the space can go from a functionally athletic space into something more akin to a high-end resort. Plants, whether large and structural or diminutive and eye-catching, offer mixes of life and stillness. It creates a playful space that feels meant to be enjoyed, whether for a quick swim or a leisurely afternoon next to the water.

The lushness you get from a faux boxwood, Kenita palm, or otherwise also adds stunning greens to contrast the abundant blues and earth tones your pool features. With the right textural placement, whether atop your alfresco table, flanking your cabana, or segmenting your pool from your other outdoor spaces, greenery offers a signal to your guests that the pool is open and ready to be enjoyed for as long as they wish to luxuriate.

Achieving Subtle Privacy

However, texture isn’t the only benefit offered by pool plants. Thicker, larger, and more structural plantings, such as textural tropical plants around the pool, also offer privacy while you and your family or guests enjoy some much-needed time in the sun, albeit without the clumsiness of more traditional room dividers and screens.

As a thick and verdant installation option, the right planters, from boxwood topiaries to faux hedge walls, offer touches of shade and delightful aesthetics that block sightlines from your other shared spaces, which is ideal for get-togethers that involve, but are not purely focused on the pool. This allows for those partaking in waterside fun to give themselves over to the experience, whatever else might be happening in your home.

Freedom From Maintenance

Those looking for low-maintenance pool landscaping plants will be relieved to find countless options that heighten a pool’s aesthetic quotient without requiring a full-time groundskeeping staff.

Faux tropical plants around the pool, such as aloe, orchids, or palms, add visual touches echoing sunny escapes. Meanwhile, faux rubber plants, succulents, and proteas add character that seems to hail from far-flung vacation locales. And each, when carefully selected from trusted and high-quality fabricators, adds beauty without the need for pruning, watering, or otherwise. These selections require minimal effort beyond deciding where to place them.

Colorful Touches

The selections you place around your pool offer an opportunity to turn your backyard pool deck into a canvas for your inspiration. Through flowers around the pool, you can imbue your taste and discerning eye on what can traditionally be an under-decorated space in the home.

Those hunting for color amidst the blue will love the look of flowers around their pool. Whether through subtle waterside table planters alongside décor from Lalique or Baccarat, structural yet movable rolling planters, or even potted planters delicately floating atop the water, embellishing your watery retreat with touches of colorful whimsy is never out of style.

Deluxe Plants for Your Pool Area

Those who wish to adorn their poolscapes with beautiful, finely-assembled faux pool plants will find no better than the creations available at Winward Home. From topiaries, wreaths, and faux hedge walls to plantings echoing sun-drenched locales, each hand-crafted faux plant we offer makes a smart addition to your pool and patio.

Discover low-maintenance pool landscaping plants and inspiration for your outdoor space. The possibilities abound when you add structure, texture, and vibrancy with high-end plants around the pool. Explore Winward Home's collection of low-maintenance, artificial outdoor plants.