General
D.G. Hessayon, Author of Blockbuster Garden Guides, Dies at 96
His “Be Your Own House Plant Expert” and other best-selling manuals were a fixture of British life for half a century. Among his many fans was Margaret Thatcher.
D.G. Hessayon is widely recognized as the world’s best-selling gardening writer, although many people outside Britain may not recognize his name. At home, however, he was the Agatha Christie of the genre.
Like Christie’s whodunits, Dr. Hessayon’s books followed a strict formula; and, like Christie, he shunned the limelight.
“I’m far too round, far too short and far too fat, for a start,” he told the British newspaper The Guardian in 1999. “I didn’t want people coming up to me asking for an autograph or a photograph or a donation.”
Yet he was, in his own unvarnished way, a star, the guru of suburban gardeners. Margaret Thatcher was a fan.
Beginning with “Be Your Own Gardening Expert” (1959), Dr. Hessayon (pronounced HESS-a-yon) published about 60 books, not including revised editions. They marched determinedly through single topics: roses, orchids, potatoes, bulbs, vegetables, flowers, fruit, houseplants, lawns, trees and shrubs, greenhouses and container gardens. There were books on pests and weeds, and one devoted to cereal diseases.
His work was descriptive, prescriptive, comprehensive, encyclopedic and exhaustive, written in a no-nonsense tone that some called bossy. The Guardian once said that the look of his books, which he designed himself, “could be best characterized as ‘1980 East German tourist brochure,’ but without the exuberance.”
