Garden

CRAIG SHELTON is a highly regarded chef. He was the sous-chef of New York's celebrated chef David Bouley and was an apprentice to French chef Joel Robuchon. His Ryland Inn in Whitehouse, N.J., near Princeton, is one of only eight restaurants in America that has been designated as a Relais & Chateaux gourmand restaurant. Two years ago, the James Beard Foundation named him the top chef in the mid-Atlantic region. Yet, when he came to Baltimore recently, he talked at times like a farmer, singing the praises of his crops.

If you believe that the 1969 Apollo moon landing was staged in Hollywood; that Marilyn Monroe was killed by the Kennedy family and Lady Diana by the royal family ... If you believe that FDR allowed the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor to facilitate America's entry into World War II and the Bush administration brought down the Twin Towers with explosive charges and holograms in order to provoke a war for oil ... If you believe that President Obama was...

Rufus Banks, who earned the nickname "the Gardener of Roland Park" for the scores of gardens and yards he tended at homes in Roland Park and throughout the Baltimore area, died Tuesday of heart failure.Mr. Banks, 52, of West Baltimore had worked as a private gardener and landscaper for the past three years after many years of work for local nurseries. Many of the yards he cared for were in Ruxton, Guilford and Homeland, as well as Roland Park."He was always so careful in the garden," said Kathy Hudson, a Roland Park resident whose garden Mr. Banks serviced for nine years.

So you looked out the window after a thunderstorm and saw water pooling in your lawn, not running off into the gutter. Did you tsk-tsk and resolve to fill the depression with topsoil first chance you got? Or did you see it as an invitation to install a rain garden? If you chose the rain garden, take a bow. Not only will you have an attractive landscape feature, but you'll be doing your bit to cut down on water pollution, slow the rate of stream flooding in developed areas, and replenish groundwater.

ON TUESDAY afternoon, my 19-year-old son, a college sophomore, voted in his first election. On Wednesday night he called me wanting to know what had happened. His candidate for president, John Kerry, had been beaten by George W. Bush. How, the kid wanted to know, could the nation not agree with his views? Like many moments in a parent's life, this one found me wanting. I did not have much wisdom to impart. I reminded the kid that losing is a part of politics, a part that his family had become exceedingly familiar with.

THE visitor to America's suburban gardens during this year's blooming season might notice a disturbing phenomenon.Many of these back yards seem colorful, but isn't there something oddly similar about their colors?Isn't it strange that in garden after garden the rows of peonies always include three identical colors -- white, pink and dark red?Isn't it odd that along the driveways and rockeries, clumps of similar pink, mauve and white creeping phlox are in flower?Do our eyes deceive us, or is that rather dull pink rose growing in hedge-like profusion exactly the same rather dull pink rose planted in an identical row along almost every fence in the neighborhood?

SOME FOLKS spend spring weekends honing their abs, hardening their derrieres or building up their biceps. As for me, lately I have been working on upping my humus. Ever since my test results came back from the lab, I have been following the advice offered by the soil savants at the University of Maryland Cooperative Extension Service. After studying a dirt sample I sent them, they told me to add more organic matter to my garden plot, such as humus, the end product of decomposed organic matter.

The color experts tell us we're in for a period of subdued hues, but gardeners need not hold back. Although the events of Sept. 11 have toned down palettes in the design world, great colors are at the heart of every good garden, no matter what. This year, look for red, white and blue in flower beds, and for purple, orange and yellow -- color combinations with lots of punch. "When times are tight, the color palettes become more muted, softer, because people are less willing to go out on a limb," says Jay de Sibour, president of the Color Marketing Group, an association of designers who watch the world for the cultural and emotional signals that affect the colors that consumers choose.

GINNY MATTHIAS of Glenelg loves her work. It combines her hobby -- gardening -- with her former profession, counseling. But most important, what she does makes a difference in the lives of other people. Matthias works in horticultural therapy which, as she explains it, means "using plants in a therapeutic way." She runs gardening programs for senior citizens at St. Ann Adult Services and St. Elizabeth Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, both in Catonsville, as well as several retirement communities.

LONDON -- Virginia creeper has engulfed the brick wall in the garden behind the Church of St. Mary-at-Lambeth. London's warm summer has dried the grass in the center, though it remains bright in the shade by the huge sycamores, which also muffle the roar of the trucks coming off Lambeth Bridge.It is not only a garden, but a cemetery. The remains of a few famous people are here, but most were not well-known. There is one man widely regarded as a villain, but he may have been miscast by history.