OP-Ed

A Heretic Amid the Hibiscus

By DONNA SCHAPER

Coral Gables, Fla.

I don't know that I will ever receive a formal letter of rejection from the Coral Gables Garden Club. I know of the rejection only because one of my sponsors for membership told me. The reason had nothing to do with the quality of my flower arrangements. Nor did it stem from my spotty record as a tropical gardener. (I am a pretty good Northern gardener, but the tropics have stumped me more than once.)

The reason offered to my sponsor for my rejection was that I was "too liberal." The club members have a point: I spoke out against the war in Iraq, and I've been arrested for protesting against other wars and marching for abortion rights and racial justice.

With this rejection, I thus join Tim Robbins in this strange season: he was disinvited to a Baseball Hall of Fame event on similar grounds. I join Susan Sarandon, who was disinvited by the United Way of Tampa Bay for antiwar comments. I join the poets who were disinvited to the White House because they might have embarrassed the president. At least I am in good company.

Being blackballed by the green-thumb crowd — blue-haired or otherwise — is a sobering experience. But I can change. If a dyed-in-the-wool Zone 5 gardener can toss away her forcing forsythia, picking up her roots and replanting them in the land of the bougainvillea, then surely the garden club can consider me again.

In hopes of having another chance at membership, I have thought of renaming my French string beans, which are miraculously giving a daily crop. Perhaps henceforth they should be called liberty beans. Same for the French lettuces. There is really no need to give the lettuce a nationality. We can just call it lettuce and leave it at that. I could bathe my night-blooming jasmine in red, white and blue lights and put bunting around the orange jasmine.

The dozens of bromeliads in my front yard could be a problem: they all have spikes of pink flowers. Might the garden club think, shades of Joe McCarthy, that I am a pinko?

I am writing a third garden book to spruce up my credentials. Did I mention that when I first came to town the club featured me as a speaker? When I finished speaking, the audience clapped. In the question and answer session, no one asked about politics. Many people bought the books. Perhaps they found evidence of my politics in the pages. Was there something suspicious about the way I mulch? Are my rock decorations a threat to homeland security?

Perhaps I should write a new book called "Politically Correct Gardening." In it I could show the single right way to plant, hoe, seed and compost. I would focus on native plants (or ones that originated in countries among America's coalition of the willing). I would avoid pink flowers altogether. Nothing French would be mentioned. All plants would have to look good in bunting.

Gardening is my hobby. I wanted to join the club because its members know stuff I want to know. I'm not going to get in, but I have learned something in the process. A good gardener — even a liberal one — can't take this sort of rejection on her gardening kneepad. She takes off her gloves, puts down her shears and stands up.

Donna Schaper, senior pastor of the Coral Gables Congregational Church, is author of "The Art of Spiritual Rock Gardening."