RHS Pests and Diseases
Keep Your Produce and Plants Healthy
DK, with the RHS (previous edition: Pippa Greenwood & Andrew Halstead) · DK, 2026
Look up your plant, or look up the symptom, and find out what's wrong. The single most useful reference on this shelf for a garden that's going wrong.
The 2018 edition (9780241315606) is currently being cleared cheaply everywhere, which is exactly what happens before a new edition lands. Anyone paying full price this week will be holding a superseded book within a fortnight. Either wait ten days for 9780241662113, or buy the clearance copy knowingly. This matters more than usual for this particular book: it contains chemical-control advice, and UK pesticide approvals change — an old edition may recommend products since withdrawn from sale. One thing we can't yet confirm: DK now credits the new edition to "DK" rather than to Greenwood and Halstead, whose RHS credentials were the trust argument for it. Check the credit on a physical copy.
What's actually in it
- Plant-by-plant listings — look up what you're growing, see what commonly afflicts it.
- A gallery of symptoms — diagnosis from what you can actually see, which is how real diagnosis works.
- An A–Z directory of pests, diseases and physiological disorders, with detailed remedies.
- Strong emphasis on edibles, and on organic and biological controls, with chemical control covered within current UK pesticide legislation.
What it actually says
Specifics from inside the book — so you can judge whether it's telling you anything you don't already know.
- Three separate routes to a diagnosis, by design: look up your plant and see what commonly afflicts it; match what you're seeing against a visual symptom gallery; or go to the A–Z directory for the detailed remedy.
- A stated position on chemicals rather than a legacy list. The previous edition explicitly covered changed legislation on chemical control alongside an emphasis on organic solutions — the book updates rather than reprints, which for a pesticide book is the whole ballgame.
- A deliberate bias toward edibles, with the new edition adding entries for the latest prevalent problems.
- The RHS cites this book in its own scientific reading list for plant pests and entomology — institutional endorsement of a kind most gardening books never get.
Buy it if
Something is eating, spotting, wilting or blackening your plants and you need a name for it.
Don't buy it if
Professional growers and horticulture students needing pathology depth — no diagnostic keys, no microscopy, no lifecycle detail.
Where it falls short
At 224 pages it's a field guide, not a pathology text. House plant pests appear only where they overlap with garden pests — aphid, scale, mealybug, red spider mite — so it isn't a house plant book. Weeds are largely absent. And the structural warning: chemical-control advice in any pesticide book ages badly. A 2007 or even 2018 copy may name products no longer legal in the UK.
Who wrote it
Pippa Greenwood read botany at Durham, took an MSc in crop protection at Reading covering entomology and plant pathology, and ran the RHS Plant Pathology department at Wisley for eleven years from 1985. She has been a Gardeners' Question Time panellist since 1994 and holds an honorary doctorate from Durham. Andrew Halstead is the retired RHS Principal Entomologist, specialising in garden pests and biological control. Between them, a plant pathologist and an entomologist — precisely the right two people. Which is why the byline matters: DK's own page for the 2026 edition still credits both, but several retailers list it simply as "DK". Check the credit on the copy you buy.
Where it was written
Strongly UK-specific, and this one is non-negotiable — approved chemical controls differ by jurisdiction and UK pesticide approvals change frequently.
The facts
- AuthorDK, with the RHS (previous edition: Pippa Greenwood & Andrew Halstead)
- PublisherDK
- Published2026
- FormatHardback, 224 pages
- ISBN-13
9780241662113 - LevelReference
Checked against publisher listings, UK retailers and library records in August 2026. If any of this is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
Where to get it
Buying secondhand? Match the ISBN above — several books on this shelf have editions that look identical but aren't.