World's best-selling gardening expert leaves family £4.7m fortune

The world's best-selling gardening writer, David Hessayon, who died aged 96 in January, left his family a whopping £4.7million fortune. Hessayon was known for his expert guides for green- fingered enthusiasts, which sold 67 million copies globally. It is estimated that half of all British homes own at least one of his manuals.

Probate details revealed his estate was valued at £4,907,926, but after expenses were paid, this was reduced to £4,740,925. Dr Hessayon's will stated the money would be split between his daughters Angelina and Jacqueline, with cash gifts of £70,000 made to his four grandchildren. In his will, which was drawn up in 2019, he also left a gift of £250,000 to his long-term assistant, Gillian Jackson, and £70,000 to his son-in-law. He owned a 25-room Georgian mansion in Halstead, Essex, with 27 acres of land containing the 10,000 plantshe had written about.

Dr Hessayon continued tending his roses and shrubs well into his 90s, which friends believed kept him so healthy that he would live to 100.

Dr Hessayon grew up in Salford, Greater Manchester, the youngest of seven children. He is said to have helped his Cypriot watchmaker father, Jack, cultivate a few colourful reminders of the country he had left behind. His mother, Lena, died when he was four years old. He was educated at Salford Grammar School and studied botany and chemistry at Leeds University before achieving a PhD in soil science at Manchester University.

His illustrated guides, which he designed himself, featured easy-to-follow expert advice to gardeners. His first one, Be Your Own Gardening Expert, was published in 1959. During the following 60 years, he wrote more than 50 guides to growing and maintaining vegetables, flowers, trees, and shrubs, making it the world's best-selling gardening series.

He once described the book series as "for the housewife who isn't really interested in gardening but feels she must keep the garden nice or the neighbours will talk". He revealed: "I'd like to feel they eventually get their backs broken by hard-working people with dirty hands."

When speaking about gardening shows on TV, he didn't hold back with his opinions, claiming that "people just tune in to see whether the presenter is wearing a bra or not".

After meeting his US-born wife Joan in Paris in 1949, he moved to Missouri to work for her father's newspaper. He later became managing director of Pan Britannica Industries, the makers of Baby Bio fertiliser. Joan Hessayon, who wrote romantic novels, died in 2001. He set up the Joan Hessayon Award for new writers in the genre.