While on the wiki, I noticed that a planted rose or daylily has more beauty than a Gold tile.
so I wondered: what's stopping you from just making the entire floor a single growing zone full of beautiful flowers?
Not much, actually! with almost no wealth, I managed to turn a basic room with a single chess board into a beautiful recreation area.
The downsides are that it needs almost constant work to be kept looking nice, is open to the elements and highly flammable, of course.
as I'm in a biome that has mild winters, would it be worth me going Al fresco instead of putting so much effort with carpets and statues when there's no toxic fallout?
Don't think about how the colonists are happy trampling and walking through fields of thorny roses too much...
Since a normal quality large statue is only worth 5.55 times as much as a daylily, this would probably be a decent enough strategy, at least in the early days of your colony. Long term, the work required to make a statue would be less than the work to replant all the flowers, and would also be more space efficient. The math is even more in favor of statues as you get farther into the game, since your artist will produce more beautiful statues as they gain skill, and you can also boost the beauty with better materials. :)
What you dont realize is that you can do this indoors too - the plants wont grow proper but it'll take a good while for them to die. No big deal for a decicated plants pawn to keep up.
Since they are flowers, a regular wooden torch give them enough light togrow.