Sex sells, even to gardeners

I recently bought a little pot plant for my office, which is now sitting on my window sill, slowly dying in all likelihood. There’s no label on it, so I have no idea what it is. I decided to start googling for pictures of houseplants, thinking I’d recognise it visually. And then I stumbled upon “The Nursery at TyTy“. Like many garden centre websites, it has many pictures of flowers, plants, bushes – all lovingly described to help the customer make their purchase. For example, we are told:

The Domestic Nandina works well as as evergreen line of shrubs that always show berry colors of red or fragrant flower colors of white displayed on delicate lace-like, medium green leaves that constantly move in a breeze. Nandina’s size is 6 to 8 ft. tall, but only 3 feet wide, meaning it works well in narrow spaces.

Fine. But the picture to accompany this? Well, it (and more) is below the link.

A Nandina shrub and nothing else

I can’t quite see the shrub properly because there’s a SCANTILY CLAD LADY in the way. I’m not exactly complaining, but what the fuck?!

What’s the message we’re supposed to take away, albeit subconsciously? “Buy a nandina shrub, and beautiful women with throw themselves at you!”

For what it’s worth, I don’t think she was even there, in front of the nandina shrub, which would have be forgivable, if a little surreal. Instead, it looks to me like she’s be rather crudely photoshopped in.

And she’s not alone…

Reading on,

The fall and winter landscape is pleasantly illuminated by the rustic red leaves of the Firepower Nandina shrubs, especially when planted just outside a large picture window.

So I’m imagining a plant outside a window. Which is what I get, I suppose:

Nice to see it’s equal-opportunities in their model selection. By the way, the alt-text caption for that one reads “Guy looking out the window at a Firepower Nandina shrub”. Strictly speaking, he appears to be scowling manfully into the camera, but never mind.

Again, he looks a touch photoshopped to me.

What what is this guy thinking?

You can buy your Chinese Boxwood Evergreen Shrub Plants from the TyTy Nursery today!

apparently.

Some are verging on the comically NSFW territory:

Golden Rhino Horn Banana Tree

Apparently there are some trees in this picture too:

A game for anyone with even more time on their hands: find the highest ratio between flesh and vegetables in any one image…

I give you The Nursery at TyTy.