Collections

Frances R. Williams Hosta Archives

The Andersen Horticultural Library is privileged to count among its special collections, the Frances R. Williams' Hosta Archives. This archive consists of correspondence, notebooks, photographs, and slides of Hosta plants by Mrs. Williams. 

Frances Williams' interest in Hosta developed after her children were grown, and she had time to devote to her small, shady yard in Winchester, Mass. Over the next forty years she accumulated a vast knowledge of Hosta through growing and breeding plants, making observations, taking copious notes, and in carrying on a prodigious correspondence with people all over the world. In 1969, the American Hosta Society gave her a citation for "inspiring others with the love of Hosta." 

The archive is available by appointment.

Edmund J. Phelps

After graduating from Yale, being an ambulance driver in the French War Zone during WWI, joining the French Foreign Legion, and marrying Katherine Marfield in 1920, Edmund J. Phelps was bored with the insurance business and entered Harvard University's Landscape Architecture program in 1926. He returned home to Wayzata, MN to start his design-build practice. His work included site development of many large estates, especially in the Lake Minnetonka area. He designed the Japanese Embassy site in Washington D.C. and the General Mills headquarters in Minneapolis, Minn. The University of Minnesota College of Design awards an Edmund J. Phelps Memorial Scholarship.

The Andersen Horticultural Library has a small collection of photographs, from Phelps, of his work, along with miscellaneous correspondence and notes from his files. This collection is available by appointment.