Esteemed Scottish horticulturalist and botanist at the Chelsea Physic Garden. Philip Miller's expertise was made widely available in his renowned Gardeners Dictionary, published in editions from 1731 to 1768, while his students went on to establish the botanic gardens of Kew and Cambridge. The Dictionary not only covered methods of cultivation, but provided a systematic botanical compendium of all wild-growing and cultivated plants in Britain then known. This latter aspect makes the volume valuable to botanists today.

In addition to his horticultural work, Miller gathered together a herbarium of plants from all over the world. He shared about 50 specimens with Carl Linnaeus, who visited Miller in 1736, and also passed on many seeds from South America to George Clifford in the Netherlands. Miller's personal herbarium was sold to Joseph Banks and is now part of the Natural History Museum herbarium in London (BM), as are specimens from Chelsea originally deposited with The Royal Society. Linnaeus named the Asteraceae genus Milleria L. in his honour.

Miller was appointed chief gardener and curator (or 'Hortulanus') at the Apothecaries' (later Physic) Garden in Chelsea in 1722 on the recommendation of the scientist Patrick Blair. Miller's Scottish father had been a gardener and ran his own market gardening business in Deptford. The young Miller learnt from his father and zealously accumulated knowledge of horticulture and agriculture, travelling throughout England and the low countries in search of information and horticultural acquaintances. He had established his own nursery in St George's Fields, Southwark, before taking on his post at the Physic Garden.

The Physic Garden was established in 1673 by the Company of Apothecaries, who had divorced themselves from the Company of Grocers early in the 17th century. At the time Philip Miller was appointed, Hans Sloane, owner of the Manor of Chelsea, had recently intervened to help the financially ailing Physic Garden, setting a low rent (£5 per year) and introducing a clause into the agreement that secured its purpose: the Garden was required to annually present 50 dried specimens of its cultivated plants to the Royal Society. Miller was thus impelled to constantly introduce new plants to the garden, and achieved this by building up a wide circle of correspondents from across the globe. In particular he developed a useful relationship with the collector John Bartram of Philadelphia.

Early on in his time at Chelsea, Miller married a Miss Kennet, whose sister, Susanna, also made a botanical match in the artist George Ehret. Philip Miller and his wife had three children, born in the 1730s, one of whom (Charles) went on to work in botany at Cambridge alongside the son of John Martyn. New rules at the Physic Garden stipulated there should be accommodation for the director and gardener, thus Miller moved into his quarters on the upper storey of a brand new orangery in about 1727. However, the family are recorded to have lived in a house on Swan Walk, next to the Physic Garden, from 1734.

With the help of London's leading nurserymen of the time, Miller produced the first quarto Dictionary in 1724. The impressive folio version appeared for the first time in 1732, followed by repeated editions and translations in Dutch, German and French. It was regarded as the work of the century on horticulture and Miller became a highly respected horticultural consultant. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1729 and often contributed papers to its Philosophical Transactions. Between 1755 and 1760 he supervised the publication of The figures of plants, being the most beautiful, useful and uncommon plants described in The gardeners dictionary on 300 copper plates, which was executed by leading botanical artists, including Georg Ehret.

Although a correspondent of Linnaeus, Miller was not quick to adopt his system of classification. Instead he used the nomenclature system of J.P. de Tournefort for the seventh edition of the Dictionary (1755-1759) and only in the eighth edition, published in 1768, used the binomial system. By this time, despite his raising the profile of the Chelsea Physic Garden beyond measure, his relations with the Court of Apothecaries and the garden committee had become strained due to the level of authority he had assumed. He resigned in November 1770, taking a pension of £60. He had not long to enjoy retirement, however, for he died a year later. His grave (in the yard at Chelsea Old Church) was only marked in 1810 by the Linnean and Horticultural societies.

Sources:
C. Jarvis, 2007, Order out of Chaos: 222
H. Le Rougetel, 1990, The Chelsea Gardener: Philip Miller 1691-1771
H. Le Rougetel, 2004, "Miller, Philip (1691-1771)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:
www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18734, accessed 10 November 2011
F.A. Stafleu, 1969, "Review: Miller's 1754 Gardeners Dictionary", Taxon, 18(6): 713-715
George Clifford Herbarium, Wageningen:
www.george-clifford.nl/UK/collections.htm, accessed 10 November 2011.