Pasley (pronounced ­“Paisley”), a man of original talent who firmly remained very much an individualist, rose to become a senior lecturer at the English Gardening School in Chelsea, London, and designed gardens throughout the UK, France, Switzerland and beyond. The lectures and courses he devised took him worldwide, and he accompanied these with his own slides and a commentary without a superfluous word.

Always interested in genealogy and matters of family descent – his father had researched the Dumfriesshire baronets of Pasley of Craig – he learned of the nascent Paisley Family Society in the 1980s and joined in 1989. It was a decision which changed his life. He threw himself enthusiastically into all matters Paisley to such effect that, two years later, he was invited to become society president, a position he held for 15 years until he stood down to be succeeded by the Rt Rev John Mone, bishop emeritus of Paisley.

Pasley adopted the complete Scots persona, displaying style and behaviour as befitted such a distinguished position, taking a house in Moffat to be close to clan occasions and paying particular attention to being attired not only in Paisley kilt but accoutred appropriately throughout whatever the occasion. At the annual Paisley dinner in 2002, he presided in kilt and black tie, medals glistening, chairing a gathering of Paisleys worldwide. He also converted a one-time garage at his home into a museum of family records.

Descended from an old Irish family of whom he was senior representer, Ealing-born Pasley’s grandfather, William, was a Dublin-born watercolourist and heritor of a family engineering ­company. Two world wars provided development opportunity for the family: after 1914, William Pasley opened up in Sherborne, Dorset as the Pasley Engine Company providing shells, while Rex, Anthony’s father, became a production engineer with the aircraft company Handley Page in the last war. Anthony broke with engineering but continued the military link by serving with the Royal Army Service Corps for 16 years.

Always interested in plants and shrubs, he became a paying pupil of the London landscape architect Brenda Colvin, moving in 1967 to a five-year post with Sylvia Crowe and Associates, working on new towns, power stations and projects for USAF bases in the UK.

He cannily built up his own practice working from his home in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and among the gardens he designed are those of Pashley Manor in East Sussex.

He knew how to engage an audience, and his growing lecture portfolio reflected this, working freelance at the Northern Polytechnic (now London Metropolitan University), the School of Architecture in Canterbury and the Inchbald School of Design in London. He attracted the attention of editors, and his outlets included The ­Observer, Country Life and Architectural Review.

His first book was Summer Flowers in 1977, followed a decade later by another hardback, The English Gardening School (with Rosemary Alexander, with whom in 1983 he was instrumental in establishing the Chelsea-based English Gardening School). One of four principal judges for garden design at the Chelsea Flower Show, Pasley was active in the Garden History Society and the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society.

He would match magisterial control of space in rolling country gardens with helpful if blunt advice on the three most common problems found in town gardens – poverty of light, bad soil and lack of space.

The legacy of military discipline was evident throughout Pasley’s life, his compact stature being more than compensated for by his bearing and composure, for he was always impeccably and correctly dressed for every occasion.

A stickler for detail, he himself set the pattern in monocle and perfectly groomed moustache, the ends of which, he insisted “should always be turned upwards, thereby giving a pleasant countenance”.

Anna Pavord, the gardening author, after meeting him at the English Gardening School, wrote: “Anthony Pasley ... is quite the dapperest man I ever saw. His clothes, his moustache, his perfect centre parting, all indicated a man of exquisite taste, a man from a more elegant age who could slip without the slightest anachronism into the company of Mapp and Lucia in EF Benson’s fictional village, Riseholme.”

In the expectation that he would reach at least 90, the age of his father, Pasley had recently moved house in Moffat, and at the time of his death was engaged in developing his new property in the town to include the private chapel that had always featured in his several homes.

Born August 10, 1929;

Died October 2, 2009.