John Abercrombie (1726 â 2 May 1806) was a Scottish horticulturist important to renovating garden techniques. He is noted for the book Every Man His Own Gardener (1767), which he co-wrote with Thomas Mawe.
Abercrombie was born in Edinburgh. 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.
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. He died from injuries obtained from an accident.