Terrace Horticultural Books began in 1991 as an outgrowth of our interest in gardening and the books we had collected to inform our garden work. It was really quite simple in the beginning. Get a tax number, print business cards and select books for removal from my personal collection. The books were all useful and interesting.  Soon we were hauling a portable bookcase to gardening events and having open houses at our home. We turned every open surface throughout the house into a book display, put up temporary shelves and turned my ‘home office’ into a book room. Our youngest called it the ‘Terrace Book House’. We still have the temporary sign over the door to that room which has long since been replaced by other venues. After periods of time at a local book co-op, antique stores and a warehouse space, we found our permanent home in September of 2000 at what was a duplex home at 503 St. Clair Ave. in St. Paul, Minnesota with the thought that we now had our future and permanent home.

Actually ‘under control’ is a euphemism for ‘hang on for dear life’. To pay the bills of all this, we retained our full time day job in the construction business. We had been accumulating books (about 850 boxes when we moved) and other stuff like computers, tables, bookcases etc. This of course had to be moved which took a month, but not until after the space had been prepared for the bookstore. We held our first open house at the new showrooms the end of Nov. 1990. After juggling a full time day job and THB, for 15 years, I resigned my day job on January 13, 2006 to give Terrace Horticultural Books our full attention and allow it be what it could be. Thanks to you and our loyal customers we are well on the way to our goals. Monday thru Friday, 9-5PM, we are available to customers, and of course around the clock 24/7 on the Internet.

Terrace Horticultural Books is now a destination. Not only for book lovers, but plant lovers as well. We cater to gardeners of course, but our offerings have grown to include technical plant subjects for books (see our highlighted catalogs), ephemera, gardening artifacts, seed packets and catalogs, and unframed art. We offer useful, interesting and collectible objects for plant lovers. In 2006 we are finishing our display gardens for visiting customers. Within the garden we have created a seating area to serve ‘Tea at Terrace’. We do ‘Tea at Terrace’ once or twice a day in two-hour increments and by appointment to allow for get acquainted time and touring.

Thank you for your interest in Terrace Horticultural Books. If you become a customer, we will do our best to provide the best most interesting books available for the money. You should note that our database is aged for preferred customers that visit our site. Any book listed will not be available in other databases until at least 30 days after initial entry. In other words, rare or unusual books will be found here first rather than at Advanced Book Exchange (ABE) or other sites. For Sept. 2006 we were the ABE featured bookseller (of about 12,000 sellers) on their website. We hope you would find our site interesting enough to visit periodically. You also might wish to contribute to our Garden Book Forum (link is at bottom of our home page) blog or at least check out the chatter when the mood strikes. Good book hunting to you! Kent Petterson