THE OTHER DAY I was sitting on the front porch nursing a gin and tonic and a book, diligently restricting myself to one sip per five pages. This increased my speed-reading rate but not my comprehension of the sad state of the rattan side table on which a beautiful Dorothy Thorpe collins glass was carelessly placed.

Thus absorbed, I reached blindly for the cocktail and knocked it over.

Grieving in equal parts for the shattered glass and the gin—and wondering what would get me through chapter three—I studied the scene of the catastrophe. The side table, which had been left outdoors through the winter, had been alternately raked by rainfall and baked by California’s scorching sunshine. It was wobbly, unraveling and furred with a dark mold. I shuddered. Some kind of green, leggy bug lived in it.

After briefly considering calling 9-1-1, I grabbed my laptop and went online to try to find a replacement table with a graceful silhouette: something classic and timeless to complement my 1920s-era Spanish Colonial bungalow and reliable enough to support a gin drink.

FRENCH FALLBACK Beneath concrete hand-sculpted to resemble tree branches is an iron frame that creates a sturdy foundation for Currey and Company’s faux bois Elwynn Bench, a riff on the Gallic classic. $3,863, MeadowBlu.com

That’s when the real trouble started. Google’s top suggestions resembled clumsy cubist drawings of tables as imagined by a kindergartner. Most were contemporary concrete lumps, minimalist models with plastic-panel tabletops or stackable acrylic sets.

Although the trend right now in indoor décor is furniture designed to connect to nature—with curvy, branchlike legs, floral-pattern upholstery and organic, nubby textures—the opposite is true when it’s time to furnish outdoor spaces. With the exception of old standbys like Adirondack chairs and wicker settees, the current aesthetic of most outdoor furnishings is sleekly minimal, with sharp angles and unforgiving forms. In other words, with no connection to nature.

“Where did all the traditional-style outdoor furniture go?” I asked Brownlee Currey, president of Atlanta-based home furnishings manufacturer Currey & Company.

He explained that as outdoor-furniture manufacturing went overseas years ago, it was geared to suit the mass-production needs of big-box stores. “Designs got simplified, and a lot of the midrange guys who made more traditional styles went out of business,” he said.

As a result, he said, contemporary designs are here to stay—at least for a while. “It would be a five-year process to change the tooling and equipment used in manufacture,” Mr. Currey said. “It’s not easy to change, like fashions in clothing. We’ll see hemlines move next season but not styles of outdoor furniture.”

“Most outdoor furniture is sleekly minimal, with unforgiving forms. In other words, with no connection to nature.”

There are of course exceptions in what research company Statista estimates to be a $1.93 billion outdoor-furniture market nationwide—particularly at the luxury end of that market. For instance, Currey & Company manufactures an outdoor furniture collection in the charming faux bois (“false wood”) style the French created in the 19th century. This was achieved by covering metal frames with concrete that is sculpted to resemble branches and twigs. But at $634 for a three-legged side table, the collection is out of reach for many shoppers. Including me.

“Faux bois is a lovely niche business, but it’s never going to be the biggest category in outdoor furniture because it’s so heavy—expensive to transport and hard to move around once you have it in the garden,” Mr. Currey said.

ELEGANT ALTERNATIVE Coated in powdered varnish to withstand the elements, this wrought iron silhouette evokes the graceful curves of Renaissance-era furniture. Officina Ciani’s Rombi Outdoor Armchair, $3,865, Artemest.com

Janice Feldman, a furniture designer who founded her high-end outdoor-furnishings company Janus et Cie in Los Angeles in 1978, said that as the industry evolved over the past decades it became inevitable that “today if you walk the aisles at the High Point furniture market, there is a sort of boring sameness that can make it difficult to define what’s different about all those straight, modern products.”

Shipping costs are a major reason for this, she said. “If you don’t get too fancy on the design and everything can be packed flat, you can fit a lot more pieces in one container.”

Technology has also influenced people’s visual expectations and taste in recent decades, said Ms. Feldman, whose own furniture designs run the gamut from traditional to modern. “Just look at the modernity of the shape of the iPhone that everyone is carrying around.”

In fact, every piece of furniture we acquire tells a story about who we are and who we want to be, said Annie Coggan, a designer who teaches at the Pratt Institute of Art and Design in Brooklyn.

“What story does hard-edge contemporary garden furniture tell?” I asked her.

“The cynical me wants to say that with modern furniture you’re controlling the landscape,” she said. “You are trying to tidy up nature.”

“What a horrible thought,” I said.

“Well, don’t worry because nature is still something we haven’t blessedly overcome,” she said.

CLASSIC OPTION Made of reconstituted stone, the Cyril Round Dining Table sits atop an ornate pedestal supported by a classically proportioned plinth. $3,200, BurkeDecor.com

That’s a comfort, but rather than helping me in my search for an affordable, classically styled side table for my porch, I was reminded how much I love the whimsy of faux bois. What would be more adorable—and by the way sturdy, if you wanted to set a drink down—than a little concrete side table sculpted to look as if it was made of elegant, curved branches?

“It’s fantasy, fairyland furniture,” agreed faux-bois artist Diane Husson, whose one-of-a-kind, hand-sculpted benches take weeks to create and are destined to grace the landscape on rolling estates. “But,” she added kindly, “there are some people coming out with small faux-bois items that are fiberglass and resin. They’re apples and oranges from what I make, but they’re affordable.”

Thank you.

One refined Google search later and I was the owner of a round faux bois stool shaped like a tree trunk ($368). And fortified by faux nature and real gin, I will be ready to tackle chapter three of my book.

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