PRESS

ROOMS+GARDENS

The Washington Post Magazine

"Escape to the city: A stylish pied-a-terre above a Georgetown mansion offers a luxurious welcome to the owner's visiting children and grandchildren -- two cozy apartments have been transformed from sterile servants' quarters into smartly decorated living spaces -- a private Washington sanctuary.  The flats are now decorated with antique Napoleon III and Louis XVI furnishings, linens, and other items brought over from France. 'The apartments had to be an elegant and restful retreat, not an impersonal hotel room,' Rubino says."


Martha Stewart Living

A perennial source of inspiration for the team at MSL, Rooms+Gardens is regularly featured with on-page credit and as a valued resource in the Guide section of the magazine as well as Stewart's books on decorating.


Architectural Digest

“One of the most interesting [shops] is Rooms&Gardens, owned by Margaret Rubino, who has a shop in Washington, D.C., for six years where she offers a mix of indoor and outdoor antique furniture and garden ornaments.”


New York Magazine

"Following the French example, Rubino [...] brings the outdoors in and combines it with nineteenth-century French antique furniture in her shop, Rooms+Gardens. Her latest endeavor is a branch of her Georgetown store, and she's filled it with an arcane assortment of offerings. Salvaged balusters turn up as lamps, balcony grates as cocktail tables. [...] You won't find dozens of pots, urns, or plant stands -- only one or two splendid examples. Since Rubino makes choices on the basis of personal appeal, everything here reflects her taste -- simple yet elegant."


House & Garden

"French garden antiques have been given an achingly romantic air in rooms filled with herb topiaries by Margaret Rubino, a lawyer who always wanted to design gardens [...] The stock usually includes nineteenth-century French steel chairs and tables, old demi-rond iron benches with horsehoof feet..."


Metropolitan Home

"The Capitol's freshest, most innovative design shop is Rooms+Gardens, which owner Margaret Rubino defines as 'a celebration of the threshold between indoor and outdoor living.' [...] Rubino fills the shop with an abundance of greens -- cutting tree branches instead of fresh flowers -- that give Rooms+Gardens an outdoorsy fragrance. Treasures [include] antique iron-ribbed benches encrusted with two centuries of paint [...] unearthed at the Marche aux Puces in Paris, or a giant 30"-tall, butter-yellow glazed terra cotta pots from 18th century Provence."