His first book, Wild Flowers of Britain (1977), sold 400,000 copies in its first year. He went on to publish more than 30 photographic field guides (often written with Martyn Rix) which have sold more than 4.5 million copies worldwide. Phillips trained at Chelsea School of Art from where he entered a career in advertising culminating in the position of art director at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising. He left O&M to start a career as a freelance photographer, winning many awards before turning his photographic talents to the world of natural history. Roger Howard Phillips MBE (16 December 1932 – 15 November 2021) was a British photographer, botanist and writer. [1] Biography [ edit ] Meanwhile, years of voluntary work in the communal garden in Eccleston Square, Pimlico, where he lived, led in 1980 to Phillips being asked to take on its management. Under his stewardship the garden, now part of the National Gardens Scheme, was transformed into a plantsman’s paradise, containing the National Collection of Ceanothus, in addition to some 200 different climbing roses and 120 different Camellias. Phillips accepts their compliments modestly while polishing off his stew – a dish I feel I could eat every winter lunchtime and never tire of. There is some discussion of the origin of the chanterelles – Portugal at this time of year – and we then wander to the edge of the market to get a glass of wine and sit and talk about the mulchy beginnings of his first love.

Mushrooms: The Photographic Guide to Identify Common and Important Mushrooms (The Photographic Guide to Identity)He is best known as an expert on mushrooms and roses who wrote more than forty books on gardening and wild plants and fungi; many with Martyn Rix. [3] [5] He was also an Honorary Garden Manager at Eccleston Square in London, where he lived, [3] [6] and served as chair of the Society for the Protection of London Squares. [2] Meanwhile, his Mushrooms and Other Fungi of Great Britain and Europe (1981), Mushrooms (2006, with a foreword by David Bellamy) and, for transatlantic foragers, Mushrooms and Other Fungi of North America (2005) earned him the soubriquet “the mushroom man”.

Definitely one of the largest pictorial collection of UK native fungi and a must own for anyone interested in fungi. MBE for man who transformed Pimlico garden". MyLondon. 4 January 2010 . Retrieved 19 November 2021. Mushrooms and Fungi are the neglected geniuses of the plant world, but they are completely essential to life, the rest of the natural world is dependent on them for their health and viability. Mushrooms can be the largest organisms on earth, with mycelium spreading over enormous distances. One recorded Honey Fungus in Oregon has been shown to cover in excess of 2,000 acres. Having sold more than 750,000 copies in Europe of his previous title on mushrooms, Roger Phillips's Mushrooms once again sets the benchmark. Quite simply, nobody with an interest in the subject can afford to be without this book.Called up to do National Service in the RAF, he was sent to Canada but resigned his commission, declaring himself a pacifist, and worked in a hospital, at the same time enrolling in night classes in painting at the Chelsea School of Art, later completing the full-time course. The artist, photographer and author Roger Phillips’ talents led him in many directions, not all of them predictable, and it is entirely consistent with his roaming, inquisitive spirit that he will be remembered by many as a learned and media-friendly mycologist, a David Attenborough of the mushroom, and as the guru of the foraging movement. He wrote and presented two six-part TV series on gardening (BBC & Channel 4). Famed for his ebullient personality and garish red glasses, he has become a well-recognised figure in the world of gardening.

Phillips has been a natural nonconformist. Three months into his national service in the RAF in Canada, he says, he somehow persuaded an air vice marshal to let him go home on the basis that he didn’t want to be trained to kill people. He later gave up work as an art director at the ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather, to become a freelance photographer, concentrating on plants. His guiding philosophy has always been: “If it’s not fun, don’t do it.” That spirit has taken him all over the world – adventures in wild food that are celebrated in his latest book, The Worldwide Forager. Plants for Europe's Graham Spencer said: "So many great books came from Roger Phillips pen and camera. I have several on my shelf, still referred to regularly."The mushroom season is usually quite short, and normally you will only see mushrooms in profusion when the rain is sufficient to overcome the evaporation caused by sunlight and the ground remains permanently damp. Long spells of summer rain can also trigger an early fruiting season. September this year saw the publication of a new edition of his Vegetables (with Martyn Rix), and at the time of his death he was working on new editions of his two earliest books, Wild Flowers of Britain & Ireland and Trees in Britain. In exchange, this makes it possible for trees and plants to live in poor soils, and in fact, it is the support of the truffle group of fungi that can be found on very poor, limey soils.

In 1970 he met the book designer David Larkin, for whom he did numerous book covers. It was Larkin who signed him up to publish his Wild Flowers of Britain (1977) with Pan/Macmillan. It is a trade system in which the mushrooms which do not have chlorophyll, and therefore cannot use sunlight to generate nutrients, receive sugars and other compounds that they need from the tree or plant. RHS gets joyful with Tom Allen and Carol Klein, with first Chelsea schoolchildren 'No Adults Allowed' garden announcedPhillips was best known as an expert on roses and fungi.He was Honorary Garden Manager at Ecclestone Square in London and in the 2010 New Year's Honours Listwas awarded the MBE for services to London Garden Squares. Phillips, Roger, and Jacqui Hurst. 1983. Wild food: [a unique photographic guide to finding, cooking and eating wild plants, mushrooms and seaweed]. London: Pan Books. Phillips, Roger, Derek Reid, Ronald Rayner, and Lyndsay Shearer. 1981. Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain and Europe. London: Pan Books. In 1975 Roger Phillips began his life’s major work of photographing and publishing pictures of the World’s garden plants. Roger developed an encyclopedic collection of books to show the difference between plants as diverse as mosses, roses, and annuals using modern photographic techniques.