Best gardening book for beginners?

I assume he is actually dead now, Hessayon,that is?

 

It is true that retailers such as Suttons have quite a lot of information on their site.
However, I would take it with a large pinch of salt.
Suggested times for planting and seeding, suggested planting locations and similar are often quite optimistic. Sometimes blurbs sound like you could stick a variety pretty much anywhere, and it will grow.
After all, they want to sell as much as possible.
That can lead to some disappointing experiences, so it is always a good idea to cross check that info with some other source, or even just ask here in the forum.

 

The only gardening book I own is James Wong's "RHS Grow for Flavour".
https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1845339363/jamwonoffsit-21

I like it a lot and found it very useful as a beginner gardener.
However, the book only covers edible species and focus on varieties which cannot be found in supermarkets.

 

According to Wikipedia, he's 92 not out.

 

I think his books go back to the 60s, I remember my dad having one.

 

I can remember the first time (1970's) a local farmer (Boston Lincolnshire) grew the first crop of courgettes in the area, he used an odd shaped corner of a field near a road and people used to go and look at this strange crop and discuss what it was and what you did with it. What he did was harvest them, make quite a bit of money and plant more the next year.

 

They always did provide information, just different formats. I have a nicely bound book from 1884 entitled "The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers from Seeds and Roots" compiled by Sutton and Sons of Reading. It is actually quite a good general gardening book; taking you through different flowers and vegetables, then the gardening year followed by chapters on pests, vermin, chemistry etc.
Sutton and Sons also produced a number of other books
Suttons were founded as Sutton seeds in Reading in 1806, moving to Torquay in 1976 and then to Paignton in 1998.