From Publishers Weekly
Michele Driscoll Alioto, garden writer and host of The Inside Dirt on HGTV, and photographer John M. Hall showcase the Glorious Indoor Gardens of 13 talented practitioners. Although more of an appreciation than a how-to, this celebration provides advice on the ways these grand displays can be adapted for common houses. By examining diverse environments such as a West Palm Beach loggia, a desert landscape in Arizona, a water garden in Houston housing championship koi and rooftop greenhouses, Alioto offers a wide range of possibilities. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Award-winning author and television personality Michele Driscoll Alioto instructs by example. Visiting 13 of the most impressive (and diverse) private interior landscapes in the country, this San Francisco–based garden designer shows backyard novices how to make the most of planting possibilities. This handsome hardcover pictorial intersperses colorful graphics and useful tips.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Michelle Driscoll Alioto, garden writer and host of The Inside Dirt on HGTV, and photographer John M. Hall showcase the Glorious Indoor Gardens of 13 talented practitioners. Although more of an appreciation than a how-to, this celebration provides advice on the ways these grand displays can be adapted for common houses. By examining diverse environments such as a West Palm Beach loggia, a desert landscape in Arizona, a water garden in Houston housing championship koi and rooftop greenhouses, Alioto offers a wide range of possibilities. ( Apr.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Glorious Indoor Gardens is one of a rare breed of garden books that deals with conservatories and garden rooms -- those transition spaces between indoors and out. Along with Joan Phelan's "The Successful Conservatory and Growing Exotic Plants" (Guild of Master Craftsman, 2002), Alioto's book goes far beyond the realm of plant-filled windowsills and looks at the sun rooms, loggias, greenhouses and pool houses that, if I had any one of them, would make living on the foggy side of San Francisco a lot more palatable. (Alioto does include one such: local garden designer Davis Dalbok's lightwell garden in a San Francisco mansion, which is also the only California garden in the book.)

Alioto explores indoor gardens as diverse as a treillage-walled loggia in Palm Beach that sports more flowers on its chintz upholstery than in its plants; a Southampton pool house filled with hydrangeas, ferns, wicker and wire furniture; a 6,000-square-foot indoor desert complete with sand floors and a 15-foot-high movable louvered ceiling in Scottsdale, Ariz.; and a crystal chandeliered greenhouse in a historic Georgetown mansion.