Britain’s most popular advice book on growing vegetables and herbs has been completely revised and updated to include an array of new products that now appear in markets and shops, reflecting the country’s growing cultural diversity.

Since its launch in 1999, Dr D G Hessayon’s The New Vegetable and Herb Expert has sold more than six million copies in the UK and overseas.   He has now totally revised, updated and added whole new sections bringing the most comprehensive published work on this subject up to date and covering plants as diverse as Abyssinian Cabbage and Tomatillo as well as the more traditional ones.

The New Vegetable and Herb Expert is one of a series of 21 ‘Expert’ gardening books by Dr Hessayon that have sold a staggering 52 million copies since the first one was published in 1959.  The full colour, revised edition goes on sale in bookshops and garden centres on 13 March priced £8.99 and is already available to pre order online.

Expert books are the world’s best selling gardening advice books and are sold in more than 30 countries across the world.  The 2014 edition of The New Vegetable and Herb Expert will become a collector’s edition as it is the last one in the series that will be personally revised by Dr Hessayon, who is hanging up his pen and retiring after 55 years spent advising the nation’s gardeners.

“It is a sentinel moment,” says Susanna Wadeson, the publishing director at Transworld Publishers who have been responsible for Expert books since 1993.    “David Hessayon has transformed the way we garden in the UK and overseas.  It is an incredible and unparalleled achievement in publishing.

“His literary heritage will live on and Expert books will continue to guide and advise gardeners of all ages and varying levels of experience in its unique and informative way.  The existing titles will continue to be updated and new ones will appear regularly.”