Back to school for Bert’s Nurseries

This gardening minilogue dropped with a recent mailer from one of the Littlewoods family of catalogues. We know little else about it.
We like its timeliness. It is obviously capitalising on the current renaissance in gardening and trying to extend Shop Direct’s reach into a new product sector. We don’t like its frivolous use of apostrophes, excruciating typos and poor grammar. Here are some of the mistakes we picked up, verbatim, whilst casually leafing through the catalogue’s 16 pages:

• Aloe Vera Known as the ‘medicine plant’ due to it’s healing powers


• Lysimacha is excellant for moist area’s and pondsides.


• Also known as “Heavenly bamboo’ this shrub is prized for it’s oriental effect and distinctive lacy foliage.


• Also known as “Juneberry’ this decidous shrub puts on a show for most of the year, stary white flowers bloom in dense clusters in strong contrast with the young coppery foliage in March, turning green in Summer it will be smothered in dark red edible berries.


• Ideal for in your Summer baskets or planters, these fine Fuchsia’s will flower all Summer.

As the copy is that bad, is it any wonder that Bert’s Nurseries “forgot” to add the web address to the footer of each page?—MT