Relate is the UK’s largest provider of relationship support. One of their key aims is to help their 65+ market have healthier relationships, but with the biggest rise in STI’s among the over 65s, clearly this isn’t healthy. So, how do you make this hard to convince age group think about safe sex?

Especially when they were taught that condoms were for stopping pregnancies, not diseases.

Research showed that when they’re not in the bedroom, they’re in the garden.

So we educated them on their No1 past time (sex) with cues from their No2 pastime (gardening).

Under the banner of The Hornicultural Society, we briefed a world class horticulture illustrator to help develop classic and elegant botanical drawings which, on closer inspection, are suggestive of sexual organs. Tasteful rather than puerile nods to a clitoris, penis, breasts or testis. This subtle visual wit fit with the tone of voice of the campaign. We also created bespoke typography to give each seed packet its own personality with cheeky characteristics built into the letters. Our illustrations were then applied to our seed packets, to make them look as authentic as possible, with painstaking attention given to every tiny detail.

Anyone who sees the designs and illustrations won’t look at an onion or aubergine in the same way again.

Older people in the UK have an obsession with garden centres. They love picking plants for their borders and seeds for their vegetable patches. The seed packets are generally very tastefully designed, with classic botanical illustrations. Which lend themselves very well to some playfully disruptive reinterpretations, turning artichokes into clitoris and aubergines into penises, in the same tasteful style that borrows from the elegant Royal Horticultural Society gardening books they leaf through - a name straight out of British folklore – this couldn’t have been better designed to reach a conservative audience with a sparkle in their eye and a spark between the sheets..