Carol O’Meara over at Gardening After Five has a bone to pick with gardening-related television advertisements and I must agree with her.
“The three-second scene shows a man grabbing the tree by the trunk in order to lift it from its pot, which proves that the fellow doing this is an actor, not a gardener. A gardener knows this is a no-no. Grabbing the tree by the trunk to lift the heavy root ball from the pot puts the tree at risk of damage to the bark, which is sensitive in spring growth.”
I must agree with Carol on this point. The realities of advertising often means that the gardening examples seen most often are bad examples. As I commented on the blog…
Good to know I am not the only person who screams back at the TV! (SMILE) Usually my outbursts relate to bad technology use or depictions, though.
Ah, but you did the correct thing in response to this ad…you wrote about it and the right way to do things.
Where would we garden bloggers be without all the bad examples we see every day?!? (LAUGH)
This particular ad calls for a detailed post, using the advertisers named, such as “Don’t plant trees the way!” In that way, you might actually catch some folks who have viewed the ad — just the people that need the info the most.
I do believe that the best thing we garden bloggers can do is use the bad examples as great fodder for future posts. I often find that responding to the things I read and see is much easier than creating blog posts out of whole cloth. That said, my own garden usually provides much to write about, even if it is my own form of bad examples or simple mistakes on the garden.
What bad gardening examples have you seen lately? Share them in the comments!