LEWISTON – Ben Bineau has more than 50 flower pots in his yard. They take up nearly every inch of the crushed stone path surrounding his mobile home.

They are crowded on his deck and sitting at the entrance of his shed. They are set on every step and hanging from his carport.

Bineau doesn’t worry about the sun. He doesn’t use a watering can, a hose or gardening tools. All the 68-year-old retired beauty salon owner needs is a bottle of cheap hair spray and an occasional squirt of spray paint.

Bineau’s floral arrangements are all fake.

He has made each of them at a small table in the corner of his den with silk flowers from Wal-Mart, Popsicle sticks he buys in bunches of 150 for a $1 and his glue gun.

“I go through that glue like water,” he said.

First arrangement

Bineau made his first floral arrangement shortly before he and his wife sold their beauty and tanning salon in Lisbon.

His parents had given him two ceramic vases in the shape of cherubs filled with red and white carnations. When the flowers died, he decided to go to the craft store instead of the flower shop.

“I’m lousy with real flowers,” he said. “Gimme two days and they are dead.”

Back then, he did something that he would never do now. He bought two bunches of silk carnations. Then, without cutting the individual flowers from the bunch, he stuck them in a block of foam. He added some green and set the vases on the counter in his shop.

His customers raved.

“Everybody told me they looked good,” he said.

Bineau made a few more arrangements for his salon. But it wasn’t until about a year later, after he retired, that he started churning them out by the dozens.

“It is something that just came to me,” he said. “I didn’t go by pictures or instructions. I just started making them and I’ve gotten much better over the years.”

Tricks

A short man with a dark tan and rings on every finger, Bineau has learned a few tricks from reading craft magazines and talking with the ladies in the silk flower aisle at Wal-Mart.

For one, he always separates the flowers before carefully sticking them in the foam. He uses spray paint at the start of every season to brighten up his reds and dark blues. And, when the arrangement is complete, he squirts it with hair spray.

“It gives a great shine and keeps it dust-free,” he said.

That makes his wife, Janet, happy. A former hair stylist who now spends her time making dream catchers and costume jewelry, she has told Bineau that he can have his flowers all over the house as long as he keeps them clean.

Bineau estimated that he spends about $500 a year on his hobby. He tried selling them at one point, but it felt too much like a job. So now he either keeps them, gives them away or stores them under his home.

He has three collections – one for spring and summer, another for the fall and a third for Christmas. Last year, he won two awards for being one of the best decorated homes in Country Lanes mobile home park.

“I know that’s not that big of a deal,” he said. “But hopefully it inspires other people to do a little something to their homes.”