By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

I love natural history—anything having to do with birds, insects, and plants. I also love gardening, particularly when it involves native plants. So when I visit Flora & Fauna Books in Seattle, I get the sense that I’m dropping in on a place made just for me.

David Hutchinson has assembled a wonderful collection of new and used books here, with a clear emphasis on birding and gardening. Outside, he has a small native plant nursery where you can buy anything from swamp gooseberries to western redbud (rare even in native plant nurseries). For anybody who wants to combine learning and doing, this is the place to come.

This weekend at Flora and Fauna, I thumbed through excellent monographs on condors and owls before I laid my money down for a copy of Fabre's Book of Insects by Jean Henri Fabre. An impoverished entomologist who lived a century ago in the south of France, Fabre is the writer who turned me on to the fascinating insect menagerie that already inhabits my garden (and yours). After first reading Fabre's irresistibly beautiful prose many years ago, I started planting more flowers that attract pollinators, and paying more attention to the squadrons of bees and flies that dine on them. It has made me and my garden richer.

You may remember Flora & Fauna Books from its years in Pioneer Square. That subterranean shop was charming, but had no room for plants, so in the end the move allows Hutchinson to sell his customers the books and the plants that so many of them depend on.

If you can't make it to the book store, check out Flora & Fauna online. The bookstore and nursery, 206 623-4727, are at 3212 West Government Way in Magnolia, not far from the entrance to Discovery Park. They're open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays 11 to 5, or by appointment.