John Abercrombie (horticulturist) explained

John Abercrombie
Birth Date:	1726
Birth Place:	Edinburgh
Death Date:	2 May 1806
Nationality:	Scottish
Occupation:	Horticulturist
Notable Works:	Every Man His Own Gardener^[1]

John Abercrombie (1726 – 2 May 1806) was a Scottish horticulturist important to renovating garden techniques.^[2] He is noted for the book Every Man His Own Gardener (1767), which he co-wrote with Thomas Mawe.^[3]

Biography

Abercrombie was born in Edinburgh.^[2] As a young man Abercrombie was employed at the Royal Gardens at Kew, and at Leicester House; and later set up a successful market gardening business in Hackney and later at Tottenham. He wrote a number of works on gardening.^[4]

For the last 20 years of his life, Abercrombie was a heavy consumer of tea and a vegetarian. He smoked his pipe for six hours a day and stated that tea and tobacco were promoters of his health.^[2] He died from injuries obtained from an accident.^[2]

Selected writings

• The Universal Gardener and Botanist; or, a General Dictionary of Gardening and Botany (1778)
• The Garden Mushroom (1779)
• The British Fruit Gardener; and Art of Pruning (1779)
• A General System of Trees and Shrubs (ca. 1780)
• Every Man His Own Gardener, 9th edition (1782)

Notes and References

1. Book: Details - Every man his own gardener. Being a new, and much more complete gardener's kalendar than any one hitherto published . 1782 . Biodiversity Heritage Library.
2. Johnson, George William. (1829). A History of English Gardening, Chronological, Biographical, Literary, and Critical. London: Baldwin & Cradock. pp. 219-224
3. https://books.google.com/books?id=U0IBAAAAYAAJ&q=%22thomas+mawe Every Man His Own Gardener By John Abercrombie, Thomas Mawe
4. The Dictionary of National Biography: the Concise Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press, 1939; p. 3