GARDENING indoors can be a fascinating hobby or avocation for persons of all ages. I know, because my interest began when I was a child on a small ranch in western Oklahoma. It has grown through all my adult years. Looking back, I am somewhat surprised that as a suburbanite on Long Island and in Kansas City, indoor plants were just as vital to me as they are now in Manhattan. In writing The World Book of House Plants, my aim has been that it would serve as a complete guide to indoor plants, one or many. Part I deals with all the ways and means of growing plants in containers, usually indoors. Part II describes several hundred plants, and outlines the cultural requirements of each. Part III includes a glossary of terms, the titles of books and periodicals of interest to indoor gardeners, and a listing of mail-order sources for indoor plants and supplies for growing them.

   Officially, I wrote this book in 1962, but its beginning goes back many years-all the way to the winter of 1940, when at the age of three I grew a bean plant in our family living room.

   Even now, one of my favorite childhood memories is the Christmas my grandmother gave me a poinsettia. My fondness for plants and gardens grew along with me, and at twelve I had a 6x9 lean-to greenhouse. By 1951, my admiration for gloxinias had led me to found the American Gloxinia Society (now called the American Gloxinia and Gesneriad Society), and for some ten years I served as editor of its publication, The Gloxinian.

   In 1956, one year out of high school, I became Indoor Gardening Editor of a new magazine, Flower and Garden, based in Kansas City. Fresh from the country and naive about everything and everybody, I took a dark, basement apartment which had nothing going for it except a grand piano, and on second thought, it was I who put the piano there. One thing for sure, no plant in the world could live in that place. I didn't last there for long, but I learned a good lesson. I really have to have living plants in my environment. To survive constant travel, some people carry their own pillow, or take pills. Me, I check in at the hotel and rush out to the nearest florist for a bouquet of fresh flowers or a plant. Then I can honestly say I feel at home anywhere.

   The more books I write (originally this was my fourth, the second published; now it is around number thirty), the more I realize how many persons help me. In my 1963 Introduction the standouts were Kathleen Bourke, Vera Dillard, Larry B. Nicholson, Jr., Peggie Schulz, Katherine B. Walker and Carol H. Woodward. Today, for reasons each of them will know, I add to the list Sarah T. Lee and Wallace Guenther, my former and present Editors-in-Chief of House Beautiful.

ELVIN MCDONALD
New York City April 19J4