In 1975 Phillips began his life’s major work of photographing and publishing pictures of the world’s garden plants. Using modern photographic techniques, he set out to develop an encyclopedic collection of books to show the difference between plants as diverse as mosses, roses and annuals. His first book ‘Wild Flowers of Britain’ was a huge success, selling 400,000 copies in the first year. He wrote more than 30 additional books (often with his co-author Martyn Rix) selling over 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. He shudders at the thought. “We are going to be dust long enough,” he says. And then he brightens. “According to a French mycologist there is a mushroom that grows only on the human brain, in graveyards. I suppose because they are uniquely nutritious.” He laughs at the idea. “I don’t know if it’s a comforting thought – but there it is.” OFM Phillips published books about trees and ferns and wild flowers before he got to mushrooms. He didn’t think the publisher at Pan would go for it. The British, he suggests, had always been funny about fungi. While across Europe and beyond natives would be out in fields and forests as if on pilgrimage in mushroom season, in the UK there was no tradition. “We were famous for herbs from medieval times, of course,” says Phillips. “But those books tend to refer to mushrooms as ‘the spit of Jesus’ or ‘the fruit of the devil’. Because they grew up from nowhere overnight they were associated with witchcraft.”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. 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. 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." His entry on the Death Cap, “the most deadly fungus known”, included the alarming information that, if ingested, an initial period of prolonged and violent vomiting and diarrhoea and severe abdominal pain is typically “followed by an apparent recovery, when the victim may ... think his ordeal over. Within a few days death results from kidney and liver failure.” Those attitudes went surprisingly deep. When he was researching his first mushroom book Phillips was up in Scotland staying on a farm. The farmer was a “tight sod, who charged you extra for hot water and all that”. Phillips was out every day collecting chanterelles. One evening he told the farmer: “You have millions of these in your woods. Put them in a box and send them to France and you will make a small fortune.” The farmer looked at him and said simply: “People shouldnae eat that shite.” “And that was it. That idea was common.”

Roger Phillips is one of the world’s leading mushroom specialists with over 40 years of expertise in studying fungi in the wild. Roger’s book, ‘Mushrooms’, first published in 2006, has been hugely successful, with more than 2 million copies sold worldwide in 7 European languages. In the meantime, he follows Voltaire’s dictum of “tending his own garden”. In London this involves organising the planting and upkeep of the communal plot in Ecclestone Square where he lives; and also doing a bit of experimenting at a small cottage he owns in Wiltshire. He cooks and eats outside whenever he can; his last birthday meal involved – “bugger the neighbours” – a wood fire on the balcony of his flat. 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] 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. Phillips 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.Despite all the changes he has witnessed at first hand as a result of factory farming, he remains an optimist. He believes not only that we may see a necessary revival in sustainability, but that some of the more miraculous properties of fungi in particular might yet help us to fix the damage already done to the planet. “Fungi have been used to break down oil spills,” he says. “I think they will have a role to play in ridding the world of plastic.” Phillips presented or co-presented two television series based on his books on gardening, The Quest for the Rose (1994, BBC Two) and The 3,000 Mile Garden (1995, PBS), in which he and the US gardener Lesley Land compared and contrasted their gardening methods and preferences.

He did his national service with the RAF in Canada but resigned his commission on pacifist principles and returned to London, where he worked in a hospital and took a course at the Chelsea School of Art. “Roger was lively and gregarious,” remembers his contemporary Alan Gilchrist, “contributing regularly to theatrical events, and was the art editor of the school’s magazine Concetto.” A friend and fellow conspirator in cultural interventions was Brian Innes, whose band Roger booked for a school ball even before they became the Temperance Seven. Roger was a natural to present TV programmes about nature, and showed how to slow-cook a ham in compost 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.He was managing director of RogersRoses.com from 2001 and his books included Vegetables: The Definitive Guide for Gardenersand The Random House Book of Perennials(both with Martyn Rix), Wild Food, Mushrooms, and The Botanical Garden. In this group of Water Carriers can be found nearly all the conventional mushrooms with cap, stem and gill or pores. These include many of the best edibles and also the deadly poisonous species. The Rubbish Collectors are no less valuable in the whole ecosystem. Also, Roger Phillips was a contributor and co-author of many scientific and recreational articles. His entitled works, such as “ Fungi will have a role in ridding the world of plastic” and “ How to cut grocery bills and eat healthy.” Also, you can read his book about Mushrooms and all their types. It contains over 1250 photographs of mushrooms and fungi, often showing the specimens in various stages of growth, including all the latest botanical and common names and current ecological information on endangered species. 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. Phillips warned against using his guide – or any other – as the sole authority on edible fungi, advising that novices should always have experts identify their finds.

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. He has learned a lot, too, from spending time with a Native American tribe, the Nez Perce, in Idaho, who retain some of the ancient knowledge of hunter-gatherers. Not only did Phillips increase his knowledge of edible tubers, he became friends with an eminently quotable chief: “How long will it take mankind to realise that you cannot eat money?” 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.

In 1975 Roger Phillips began his life’s major work of photographing and publishing pictures of the World’s garden plants. Using modern photographic techniques, Roger set out to develop an encyclopedic collection of books to show the difference between plants as diverse as mosses, roses and annuals. His first book Wild Flowers of Britain was a huge success, selling 400,000 copies in the first year. He has since written 20 additional volumes (often with his co-author Martyn Rix) selling over 4.5million copies worldwide. 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. There are two main groups of fungi: the first I call the Water Carriers, and the second I call the Rubbish Collectors. Both of them are essential to life on earth. The Water Carriers live in symbiosis with flowering plants. Roger Howard Phillips MBE (16 December 1932 – 15 November 2021) was a British photographer, botanist and writer. [1] Biography [ edit ] 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.