For years, Brits Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix have turned out authoritative reference books matching detailed text to plentiful photos. This new volume (Firefly Books, $45) is closest to the author's heart, for he grows more than 400 roses in his city and country gardens. " 'Alchymist' is my favorite - it's a tough, large-flowered climber in apricot-orange," confided Phillips over coffee last month when he was visiting Seattle.

An organic gardener, Phillips vigilantly selected every rose in the book for health, vitality, fragrance and availability. The book's arrangement by category helps in choosing the hybrid musks, shrubs and albas, which Phillips recommends as healthiest and needing the least attention.

Winter, when we retreat indoors at early nightfall, is the time for fiction. Gardeners will appreciate the aristocratic Melrose Plant posing as a landscape designer in Martha Grimes' latest mystery, "The Winds of Change" (Viking, $25.95).

Grimes titles her novels after British pubs, and peoples them with eccentrics to help mitigate the grim realities of murder. In this story, Detective Superintendent Richard Jury calls on his old friend to track down clues at Angel's Gate, a Cornwall estate with a romantic, ruined garden. Plant runs into difficulties maintaining his cover as a turf expert when he comes up against the gardener and his daughter. He takes refuge in lofty talk of medieval gardens until he's called on his pretensions by a suspicious landscape architect hired to restore the gardens.

Their sparring over rare hellebores and secret fertilizer formulas is choice, and you can't help but suspect Grimes of using her novel for sweet revenge against a landscape architect or two in her own past.

Whether you garden in the shade, seek plants for year-'round effect or appreciate leaf over fleeting flower, "Ornamental Foliage Plants" by Denise Greig (Firefly Books, $45) will convince you that you're on the right path. Leaf tone, texture, color and shape have never looked so good, from the ginkgo print endpapers to the hundreds of color photos. The encyclopedic listing of leafy wonders is useful for reference, but most inspiring is the lengthy section on foliage plants for specific themes and situations. Here you'll find plants ideal for growing in containers, at the seaside, for silver foliage, autumn color and to add architectural drama to the garden.

Winter bleakness leads to dreams of future gardens, and Timber Press obliges with two new design books. Rosemary Alexander is founder of The English Gardening School at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, and her book "The Essential Garden Design Workbook" ($34.95) is as practical and detailed as you might expect from someone in charge of such an august institution. Drawings, color photographs and precise instructions lead a home gardener through the design process from site survey to maintenance, with an especially useful chapter on how to keep plant records.

A gazebo in the White Garden at Sissinghurst draped with Rosa mulliganii, pictured in " Classic Garden Plans" from Timber Press.

You might expect something similar from David Stuart's "Classic Garden Plans" ($29.95) but, instead, this is a dreamy, inspirational book filled with lovely photos and elegant writing. Stuart looks to famous gardens past and present, condensing their essential elements down into drawings, shopping lists and photos of prime plants.

If you've ever longed to create a mini-Sissinghurst, paint with water plants like Monet, design a Chinese scholar's garden, or plant a potager à la Rosemary Verey at Barnsley House, here's your chance to capture, or at any rate gain an understanding of, the magic found in these iconic gardens.

Despite Stuart's claim of contemporary adaptations, most of these gardens, even in condensed form, are far beyond anything most of us could accomplish on our own modest plots. That shouldn't prevent enjoyment of the book, however, for Stuart provides insight into the majesty, history and originality of some of the world's best gardens.

Whether you're looking for gifts or books for yourself, all these titles are in print and available at Flora & Fauna Books (except the novel), 121 First Ave. South, 206-623-4727, from local bookshops, the chain stores, or www.amazon.com.