Our Story
About Us
The story of a retired professor, a run-down townhouse, and the stubborn belief that every book deserves a reader.
Iris Calloway
Owner & Bookseller
Meet Iris Calloway
For thirty years, Iris Calloway stood before lecture halls at the University of Georgia, teaching students to hear the music in Keats, to feel the weight of Eliot's sentences, to understand why a single paragraph of Woolf could change the way you see an afternoon.
When she retired in 2011, her colleagues expected her to write a book. Instead, she bought one — or rather, she bought a place to keep them all. A crumbling 1890s townhouse on Bull Street in Savannah's Historic District, with heart-pine floors that creaked in all the right places and tall windows that let in the kind of light that makes you want to sit down and read.
She and her late husband Arthur spent a year restoring the building. Arthur handled the plaster and the plumbing; Iris handled the bookshelves. They argued about paint colors (she wanted green; he wanted blue; she won) and agreed about everything else: this would be a place where books were loved, not just sold.
Foxglove & Fern opened in April 2012. The name comes from the garden — a small, wild thing behind the building that Iris discovered was full of foxglove and ferns. She cultivated it into a reading garden with wrought-iron chairs and a small fountain. Arthur built the fountain. It still runs.
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
The Building
A Home for Books
The Ground Floor
The main bookshop fills the ground floor. Floor-to-ceiling shelves line the walls, organized by Iris's own taxonomy: not strictly by genre, but by what she calls “reading moods.” There's a section called “When You Can't Sleep” and another called “For the Garden.” The rare books live in a glass-front cabinet near the register.
The Fern Room
The entire second floor is the tea room, known as The Fern Room for the trailing ferns in every window. Mismatched vintage chairs, small marble-topped tables, and the kind of quiet that lets you hear the pages turning at the next table. Regulars keep their own mugs on a shelf by the door.
The Reading Garden
Behind the building, through a set of French doors, is the reading garden. Foxglove and ferns grow along the brick walls. Arthur's fountain sits at the center, surrounded by wrought-iron chairs and a weathered wooden bench. In spring, the jasmine makes the whole block smell like a secret.
The Events Space
A corner of the ground floor can be rearranged for author readings, poetry nights, and book clubs. Thirty folding chairs, a small lectern that Arthur made from reclaimed oak, and a sound system that Iris still asks someone else to operate. The acoustics, somehow, are perfect.
Our Promise
What Makes Us Different
Every Book, Read
Iris reads every single book before it goes on the shelf. If it's here, she believes in it. No algorithms, no bestseller lists — just a lifetime of loving literature.
Personal Curation
Tell Iris what you've loved and she'll tell you what to read next. She remembers every customer and every conversation. Her recommendations are a gift.
A Place, Not Just a Store
Foxglove & Fern is a reading room, a tea house, a poetry venue, and a garden. It's where you come to slow down. We think that matters.
Kind Words
From Our Readers
Walking into Foxglove & Fern is like stepping through a wardrobe into another world. Iris always knows exactly what I should read next.
The best tea room in the city, and it happens to be in the best bookshop. Thursday poetry nights are sacred to me.
I drove two hours to find a first edition Flannery O'Connor, and Iris had one behind the counter, waiting for me. She said she had a feeling.
My daughter fell in love with reading here. She comes for the books and stays for the madeleines. So do I, if I'm being honest.
In a world of algorithms telling you what to read, Iris is the last real bookseller. Every recommendation is a gift.
Come Find Us
Bull Street, Historic District, Savannah, GA 31401. Look for the green door with the brass fox knocker. If the foxglove is blooming, you've found the right place.