A particularly good selection of books in splendid condition awaits you on the FONA office special bookshelf. Thanks to our generous donors—board members and other friends of FONA—we have a varied group very suitable for gifts. The quality is high, the prices are low—these books deserve a good home! Come in right now, or call and reserve—202.544.8733. While here, don't neglect the other shelves overflowing with more wonderful garden related opportunities! Oh for a store window to show off this stock! We are especially strong in travel, garden history and designing with plants.

What is on the special shelves? For your friend, passionate about tulips, you could put together a very decent small library! Ask for a FONA tote to carry them off—all you need add is a festive ribbon! Start with The Tulip by Anna Pavord. Not a gardening book, it is the story of a flower that has inspired passion—greed, desire, anguish, devotion have all played their part in its development from a wild flower of the Asian steppes to the phenomenal variety of today. Sumptuously illustrated, the book also features descriptions of eighty wild species tulips and several hundred garden varieties. Focusing in on Tulipmania, Mike Dash vividly recreates this bizarre episode in European history, tracing the tulip from its origins to its arrival in Europe. It is, of course, fully illustrated. Tulipa by Christopher Baker has superb, detailed photographs of numerous species of tulips, photographed over eight months in Holland's tulip-fields under the guidance of world-leading plant specialists. It includes an essay by Michel Pollan. Finally if you wish to plant these storied bulbs, Tulips, An illustrated Identifier and Guide to Cultivation by Stanley Killingback will answer all your questions. A list of suppliers is helpful. Sections on origins, registration and classification, early tulips, mid-season tulips, late tulips, Rembrandt and florist tulips, other late tulips, botanical tulips, other species or tulipas, reproduction, cultivation, pests and diseases will answer your every question.

Enough of tulips, you say! For a wider range of plants, take a look at Drawn From Nature by van RavenswaaySmith published by the Smithsonian Institution Press. It is a comprehensive study of the botanical art of the Joseph Prestele family. Prestele (1796-1867), a native of Bavaria, was one of America's first professional botanical artists. Nature Into Art by Handasyde Buchanan is an authoritative illustrated reference to 18th and 19th century natural history books with emphasis on those that were illustrated by hand coloring. This work contains fine reproductions of color plates by Audubon, Redoute, Gould, Lear, Catesby and Bauer along with many others. Finally, the profusely illustrated Plant Discourses—A Botanist's Voyage through Plant Exploration is certain to please.

Shifting from pictures of plants to the reality of the garden, we have Tracy di Sabato-Aust's The Well-Tended Perennial Garden fast becoming an essential reference book. Her sensible approach to the maintenance and pruning of perennials, the clearly organized material and her long experience makes the book a must. In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that an expanded version has recently come out and this is not it, but the older volume is extremely useful, nonetheless. Take a look at The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Perennials by Professor Marshall Carigmyle, and Ornamental Grasses by Rick Darke—more of a picture book, but still very useful in planning, Color in Your Garden by the acclaimed authority Penelope Hobhouse, garden designer and writer, explores the nuances of color relationships in garden plants. The Garden Wall by Julie Harrod offers planning and planting design and building tips, kinds of plants that thrive on walls and how to combine them. The inspired yet practical text shows how to transform these often neglected vertical spaces into beautiful gardens.

Azaleas by Fred Galle, recipient of many horticultural awards, is an essential reference for the Washington area. This revised and enlarged edition features descriptions of over 6,000 cultivars, with culture, breeding, landscape use, planting, bonsai, providing a landmark work. A Timber Press book, hallmark of quality. Need I say, it is well illustrated.

Shift perspective from your personal garden and consider the broader context of landscape planning. Frank Albert Waugh (1869-1943) founded an undergraduate program in landscape gardening at Massachusetts Agricultural College (now U. Mass Amherst), then only the second such program in the nation. Waugh was one of the first practitioners to conceive of a history of American landscape architecture. While his writings remained rooted in the principles of naturalistic nineteenth-century landscape gardening, his theories promoted modern applications. The most comprehensive of Waugh's several published books, and widely considered a classic in the field, Book of Landscape Gardening was first published in 1899 and revised several times. This is a reprint.

Finally, to get away from it all—the hectic season, the problems of one’s own garden, take a trip! Gardens in Normandy by Marie-Francoise Valery (illustrated with fine color photos by Vincent Motte and Christian Sarramon) is an attractive work dealing with gardens not covered in many books, and the first on this specific region. Across the Channel, The English Vicarage Garden conjures up a vision of a blessed plot where it is always summer afternoon: newly mown lawns, old trees and flowering shrubs, herbaceous borders, a church spire, all bathed in a still, warm haze. This delightful book captures that vision, and simultaneously celebrates some of the outstanding English gardeners of the last two centuries. Here too are their successors: today’s clergymen, among them some superb plantsmen whose garden gates are open to the public. Not a bad place to be on a cold January day!