Jonathan Pliska is a landscape historian and author of A Garden for the President: A History of the White House Grounds and The White House Easter Egg Roll: A History for All Ages. He has extensively explored and studied documents of the historic White House. He has written and edited Cultural Landscapes Inventories for the National Park Service, including one for the Ellipse, south of the White House Grounds, and documented the Civil War military earthworks that once surrounded Washington. His interest in historic gardens combines with biography and social history. Pliska lives, writes, and plants a garden of his own in Baltimore County, Maryland.