Descriptive, prescriptive, comprehensive, encyclopedic and exhaustive

 

Dr. Hessayon’s first book, “Be Your Own Gardening Expert” (1959), went on to sell almost six million copies.    Credit...Pan Brittanica

NYT obituaries often surprise with excellent writing.  This one about D.G Hessayon, has lots to like, including the great book cover above.

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.”

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.”

Yet he was, in his own unvarnished way, a star, the guru of suburban gardeners. Margaret Thatcher was a fan.

When he had an idea for a gardening manual in the late 1950s, he asked his company to publish it, promising that if it didn’t sell he would pay the costs. A first printing of 100,000 copies of “Be Your Own Gardening Expert,” the cover quaintly illustrated with a stolid example of ’50s manhood, hoe in hand and pipe clenched in his lantern jaw, quickly sold out. The book would go on to sell nearly six million copies.

“Be Your Own House Plant Expert” (1960), his second book, was said to be the best-selling reference book of all time, after the Bible — a claim, much reported, that would nonetheless seem to be apocryphal.

But for beginning gardeners and completists, his hortatory manner, detailed illustrations and crisp style — best summed up as “do this, not that” — were a godsend. A sampling of advice, from a section in “The New Flower Expert” (1999) on how to dig, includes: “Wear stout shoes”; “Drive in the spade vertically. Press (do not kick) down on the blade”; and “For most people 30 minutes digging is quite enough for the first day.”

“The real secret of my work is that people feel at ease” with his books, he said. “I’m writing for the man in the semidetached.” 

Dr. Hessayon died on Jan. 16 at 96 at a hospital in southeast England, near his home in Essex, a Georgian house on 20 acres landscaped with most of the thousands of plant varieties he had written about.

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When he had an idea for a gardening manual in the late 1950s, he asked his company to publish it, promising that if it didn’t sell he would pay the costs. A first printing of 100,000 copies of “Be Your Own Gardening Expert,” the cover quaintly illustrated with a stolid example of ’50s manhood, hoe in hand and pipe clenched in his lantern jaw, quickly sold out. The book would go on to sell nearly six million copies.

“Be Your Own House Plant Expert” (1960), his second book, was said to be the best-selling reference book of all time, after the Bible — a claim, much reported, that would nonetheless seem to be apocryphal.