Packing the tree with twinkling lights, reflective ornaments, and tinsel can make a basic fake tree dazzle. The trick is to make the eye pay attention to everything but those not-so-realistic ...

Both O’Brien and Geller offered an alternative approach to the artificial tree and its adornments. “Maybe in Florida, people should instead decorate (and then replant) real trees, like palm trees.

Perhaps no other project in the budding city more epitomizes this quest for absurd grandeur than the Palm Islands, an archipelago of artificial ... still see the palm tree-structure.