Welcome to whisker gardens, the latest high fashion for men with bushy beards and a desire to be noticed. By all accounts, this blossoming of beards goes back to the 1970s. Soup.io user Eria posted such proof earlier this year with a photo of her father, taken by her mother in 1977.
Then, about two years ago, Utah florist and hobby photographer Sarah Winward started decorating the hair of her husband, David, with flowers. She took a series of stills and posted them to her blog in January 2013, explained BBC News’ Anna Bressanin, thus apparently kick-starting the blossoming fashion. It has been driving some to trichotillomania.
“Historically, some very dark figures wore moustaches: Hitler, Vlad the Impaler and most of the images of the Devil had moustaches,’ wrote Allan Peterkin, author of
One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair. British journalist J. B. Morton was equally disparaging: ““Vegetarians . . . pinch little children, steal stamps, drink water, and favour beards,” he claimed.
This does not sit well with the Beard Liberation Front (BLF), a British interest group that campaigns in support of beards and opposes discrimination against those who wear them.
Could this be yet another attempt by professional florists to promote their business to a niche market? The portraits of bearded blokes from Brooklyn to San Francisco (where else?) and points in between indicate artistic hands creating these floral extravaganzas. And photographs seem what the décor is limited to. We wait in vain to encounter even a single whiskery one sporting such on the street or at such events as art gallery openings.
Interviewed by Anna Bressanin, Sara Gold McBride, a Berkeley PhD student who is studying the connection between facial hair and power in history, describes it as a light-hearted protest against barefaced authority. Will a reversal of the beard’s symbol of masculine power be in the making when flowers and greenery are entwined in bushy undergrowth? Or will it slip away like that earlier attempt of floral crowns by similarly enthused florists? Only time and frost will tell.
Meanwhile, might we suggest hirsute he-males look to decorate their beards with bearded iris,
Iris germanica hybrids, and beard-tongue,
Penstemon x gloxiniodes, tastefully backed by foliage from the hairy wattle tree,
Acacia pubescens. 
