Philip Swindells

Philip Swindells was one of very few internationally recognized water garden authors when IWGS formed in 1984. For this reason, he was invited to give a keynote presentation at our premier symposium the following year. Philip graciously accepted the invitation and many more thereafter. He also served as Journal Editor, Registrar, and Coordinator for our initial annual meeting held outside of the US. While we water gardeners think of Philip in terms of our aquatic world, his expertise extended throughout horticulture. Indeed, in the UK he was best known as host of BBC gardening programs on radio and TV. His formal gardening training began at the University of Cambridge Botanical Garden. After working at Perry's Hardy Plant Farm, he became Curator of the Royal Botanic Garden Harlow Carr in northern England. Later he established an international horticultural consultation business with special focus on developing royal gardens in the Middle East. Philip's ability was recognized by winning prestigious fellowships such as: Churchill Fellowship to study botanic gardens in Germany and Scandinavia; Nuffield Scholarship to study USA Dept. of Agriculture horticultural training coast to coast and in Hawaii; Mary Helliar Scholarship (International Plant Propagators' Society) to study in-vitro aquatic plant reproduction in Czechoslovakia; and Soviet Academy of Sciences Fellowship to study botanical gardens and their public role (under communist doctrine) in Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Philip was inducted into the IWGS Hall of Fame in 1994. One of Philip's outstanding accomplishments was to persuade a publisher to make a facsimile printing of the rare 1905 Henry S. Conard monograph The Waterlilies, considered by many to be the foundation reference for the study of the Genus Nymphaea. All the while, Philip was writing numerous articles and 59 books. Various parts of his outstanding works have been translated into 24 languages. More recently, he divided his time between Europe and Australia when he managed gardening web sites including the popular GardenMessenger Yahoo group.