Phillips, Roger 1932-

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PHILLIPS, Roger 1932-

PERSONAL: Born 1932. Education: Trained at Chelsea School of Art.

ADDRESSES: Office—RogersPlants Ltd., 12 Eccleston Square, London SW1V 1NP, England. E-mail—Roger. Phillips@rogersroses.com.

CAREER: Botanist and writer. RogersRoses.com, London, England, managing director, 2001—. Also worked at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising. Freelance photographer; host of gardening television programs for BBC and other networks.

WRITINGS:

(With others) Trees of North America and Europe, Random House (New York, NY), 1978.

(With others) Grasses, Ferns, Mosses, and Lichens of Great Britain and Ireland, Ward Lock (London, England), 1980.

Mushrooms and Other Fungi of Great Britain and Europe, Pan (London, England), 1981.

Sources and Applications of Ultraviolet Radiation, Academic Press (London, England), 1983.

(With others) Herbs and Medicinal Plants, Elm Tree Books (London, England), 1987.

(With Martyn Rix) Roses, Random House (New York, NY), 1988.

(With Martyn Rix) Shrubs, Pan (London, England), 1989.

(With Martyn Rix) The Random House Book of Bulbs, Random House (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Nicky Foy) The Random House Book of Herbs, Random House (New York, NY), 1990.

Mushrooms of North America, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1991.

(With Martyn Rix) Perennials, Pan (London, England), 1991.

(With Martyn Rix) The Random House Book of Perennials (two volumes), Random House (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Martyn Rix) The Quest for the Rose, Random House (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Martyn Rix) Vegetables, Random House (New York, NY), 1994.

Grasses, Ferns, Mosses, and Lichens of Great Britain and Ireland, Trans-Atlantic (London, England), 1994.

(With Nicky Foy) A Photographic Garden History, Macmillan (London, England), 1995, Random House (New York, NY), 1996.

(With Martyn Rix and others) Perfect Plants, Macmillan (London, England), 1996.

(With Martyn Rix) Conservatory and Indoor Plants, Macmillan (London, England), 1997.

(With Martyn Rix) The Indoor and Greenhouse Plants, two volumes, Random House (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Leslie Land) The Three Thousand Mile Garden: An Exchange of Letters on Gardening, Food, and the Good Life, Viking/Penguin (New York, NY), 1997.

Trees of North America, Random House (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Martyn Rix) The Best Scented Plants, Pan (London, England), 1998.

(With Martyn Rix) Climbers for Walls and Arbours, Pan (London, England), 1998.

(With Martyn Rix) Herbs for Cooking, Pan (London, England), 1998.

(With Martyn Rix) Plants for Pots and Patios, Pan (London, England), 1998.

(With Martyn Rix) Plants for Shade and How to Grow Them, Pan (London, England), 1998.

(With Martyn Rix) Salad Plants for Your Vegetable Garden, Pan (London, England), 1998.

(With Martyn Rix) Summer Annuals, Pan (London, England), 1998.

(With Martyn Rix) Traditional Old Roses, Pan (London, England) 1998.

(With Martyn Rix) The Random House Book of Salad Plants, Random House (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Martyn Rix) The Random House Book of Scented Plants, Random House (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Martyn Rix) Old Roses, Random House (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Martyn Rix) The Random House Book of Climbers for Walls and Arbors, Random House (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Martyn Rix and others) Annuals and Biennials: The Definitive Reference with Over 1,000 Photographs, Firefly Books (Buffalo, NY), 2002.

(With Martyn Rix) The Botanical Garden, Firefly Books (Buffalo, NY), 2002.

(With Martyn Rix) Perennials: The Definitive Reference with Over 2,500 Photographs, Firefly Books (Buffalo, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Although he began his career in advertising, eventually making his way to art director of the British firm Ogilvy & Mather, Roger Phillips is most renowned for his collection of lavishly illustrated garden guide books. Whether depicting roses or edible plants, Phillips brings the natural world to life using vivid photographs and makes his topic both accessible for novice readers and interesting for more knowledgeable ones. Librarians have commented upon the usefulness of Phillips's books for their gardening collections, and general reviewers have admired their quality, making the books suitable for coffee-table display.

The critically acclaimed "Random House" gardening series to which Phillips contributes comprises volumes titled Roses, Shrubs, Bulbs, Herbs, and Perennials. All of the books have numerous, full-color photographs accompanied by descriptions about the plants' physical appearances, natural habitats, and growth cycles, among other pertinent characteristics. A reviewer in Horticulture magazine admired the "superb color photographs of more than 1,400 roses—old roses, species roses, hybrid teas, floribundas, climbers, ramblers, and miniature roses, with a chapter on hips for good measure."

Likewise, Shrubs features almost two thousand common shrubs. In a large, reference-book format, Shrubs is broken into chapters according to flowering season. The pictures were taken both in the studio, to focus on detail, and in the field, to put the shrubs into context for gardeners. Library Journal reviewer Peter C. Leonard contended that the book "should become the definitive book on shrubs for American libraries."

Perennials encompasses two separate volumes: Early Perennials, featuring plants that grow in late winter, spring and early summer, and Late Perennials, depicting those that bloom in late summer and autumn. Horticulture reviewer Ann Lovejoy praised Phillips's comprehensive treatment of the topic and admired the "evocative pictures" in the volumes. Over three thousand photographs show perennials in garden settings, but some photos feature the plants in the wild, "providing an armchair overview of the exotic jungles and bleak mountain passes frequented by plant hunters," noted Lovejoy.

Phillips's volume Herbs contains useful information about the plants' various purposes, including culinary, medicinal, and cosmetic. By their very nature, "most herbs are decidedly weedy in appearance," explained a reviewer in Horticulture, so the book presents a tougher sell than the book about roses. But Phillips rises to the challenge and supplies excellent content and an able discussion of herbs, remarked the Horticulture reviewer. Herbs is organized into nine sections, each containing detailed, informative entries about the various botanical features of herbs, including appearance, habitat, origin, growth, history, uses, modern scientific research, and directions for preparation. Library Journal reviewer Marilyn Rosenthal considered the book "well written," and believed it merits special attention "because of the hundreds of beautiful, colored photographs." A New York Times critic admired the book's "crisply informative text, describing the geographical range, culture and history of some 400 plants, accompanied by detailed photographs of each, with close-ups of leaves, flowers and—in vintage herbal style—roots."

In Mushrooms of North America, Phillips depicts the fungi world with similarly meticulous attention. Over one thousand color pictures were mostly shot in the studio in order to "capture both the external features of the mushrooms as well as their internal anatomy," according to Library Journal reviewer Paul C. Radich. Both amateur and professional mycologists will find this book an invaluable guide, Radich believed. In American Libraries, a reviewer admired the volume's "stunning" pictures that show the "external features, internal anatomy, and various stages of growth" of mushrooms.

The Botanical Garden contains two volumes: one describing trees and shrubs and the other describing perennials and annuals. These volumes serve as encyclopedias that are organized in evolutionary order and contain details about plants and their origin, common names, dates of discovery, cultivation methods, and a variety of other facts. A reviewer for Science News declared, "This amazingly comprehensive guide to plants bridges the gap gardening between books and scientific texts." The reviewer added that the strongest element of the book is the photographs, which the reviewer described as "brilliant." A Booklist reviewer described the photographs as "pure art." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly observed, "Some of the listings also include advice on cultivation." The same reviewer cautioned that readers may not be helped by these listings because they may not be able to "tear their eyes away from the four thousand-some color photographs, which show remarkable detail and are carefully arranged so that seed, fruit, and important identifying parts can be seen up close."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Libraries, May, 1992, pp. 398, 400.

Booklist, August, 2002, review of Annuals and Biannuals, p. 2006; December 1, 2002, review of The Botanical Garden, Volume 1: Trees and Shrubs, p. 696.

Conservationist, November-December, 1990, p. 50.

Gourmet, February, 1992, John Bainbridge, "A Gardener's Vision," pp. 50-54.

Horticulture, December, 1988, pp. 66-67; June, 1989, p. 59; August-September, 1991, p. 85; August-September, 1992, p. 59.

Library Journal, April 15, 1989; January, 1991, p. 134; June 15, 1991; October 15, 2002, Sue O'Brien, review of The Botanical Garden Series, p. 64.

Nation's Restaurant News, August 29, 1994, Michael Schrader, review of The Random House Book of Vegetables, p. 18.

New York Times, January 9, 1992, Linda Yang, review of The Random House Book of Perennials, p. C7; December 2, 1990, Linda Yang, review of The Random House Book of Herbs, p. 21; December 3, 1995, Allen Lacey, review of The Three Thousand Mile Garden: An Exchange of Letters on Gardening, Food, and the Good Life, p. 45; December 8, 1996, Michael Pollan, review of A Photographic Garden History, p. 42; December 2, 1990, p. 21; June 2, 2002, Verlyn Klinkenborg, review of Perennials: The Definitive Reference with Over 2,500 Photographs, pp. 13-15; September 29, 2002, Anne Raver, "Botanical Books for Eye and Intellect," p. SP13.

Publishers Weekly, July 29, 2002, review of The Botanical Garden, p. 69.

Revolution, November 12, 2002, "Gardening Gurus to Launch Paid-for Site," p. 10.

Science News, August 17, 2002, review of The Botanical Garden, p. 111.

Wall Street Journal, January 7, 1993, Patti Hagan, review of The Random House Book of Perennials, p. A12; December 13, 1994, Patti Hagan, review of The Quest for the Rose, p. A16; December 21, 1995, Patti Hagan, review of The Three Thousand Mile Garden, p. A10.