Human Flower Project

Monday, May 19, 2008

The Gun or the Garden?

Allen Bush, Director of Special Projects for Jelitto Perennial Seeds, slips out of the garden to indulge a new (but no less primordial) pleasure.

The late Charlton Heston: Biblical actor, champion of

the Second Amendment. But did he ever mulch?

By Allen Bush

The trigger-happy were in Louisville, Kentucky, last weekend for the National Rifle Association’s annual convention. The NRA honored the memory of Charlton Heston, its past president (1998-2003), who died last month.

“I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands,” are Heston’s words— divine and fondly remembered – not the words of Moses, whom Heston played on screen. And at the Louisville meeting, The Ten Commandments bowed to the 2nd Amendment: “Bear false witness against your neighbor at your own risk, but pack some heat, just to be safe.”

Deer hunters, target shooters and machine gun owners came to hear motivational speakers Ted Nugent (rocker and Motor City Madman) and Iran Contra legend and TV pundit Oliver North. They could have been planting Dr. Martin’s pole lima beans or enjoying the first yellow blooms of Gaillardia ‘Amber Wheels’ at home. It is prime time in the garden across the fruited plain. But sixty thousand visitors took the week off to peruse “Acres of Guns and Gear” instead. I heard a lot about recoil but nothing about slugs. 

Gardens and guns. The phrase doesn’t look right. The infamous Garden and Gun Club, a discotheque open in the 1970s and ‘80s in Charleston, South Carolina, was popular with gays and straights, but booze and narcotics seemed to be more essential than guns or gardens. The stylish, new magazine, Garden and Gun, whose name commemorates the Charleston disco, is devoted to “21st Century Southern America” – less dancing and more sporting.

Gaillardia “Amber Wheels,” competing with sidearms for the hobbyist’s attention

Photo: Allen Bush



Gardening and hunting are primordial hobbies – humanity and nature – with an aging demographic. There are more women gardening than men; hunting is a man’s world.  Both have their fair share of obsessed collectors – historic Colt 45s or hostas. Gardening remains the country’s number one pastime, but only if you include those who do little more than cut the grass. Hunters despair over loss of property to development. Neither group seems able to figure-out how to get Generations X and Y off the Internet and outdoors – the outdoors gardeners and hunters love.

A bumper sticker says, God, Guns and Guts made America, Let’s Keep All Three. That may make sense to the NRA (more so than Give Peas a Chance) but while the convention goers protect the right to bear arms, I wonder what’s happening in their gardens. Do they garden at all? (Bird dogs and vegetables make poor bedfellows.) Nugent’s book Kill It and Grill It has good rotisserie tips, but after the hunt, wouldn’t it be nice to have something tasty and colorful from the garden to go with the fresh meat? (Poppin’ a bunny from the back porch with a .22 caliber subsonic hollowpoint doesn’t count.)

The author handles a 357 Magnum at the National Rifle Association’s convention

Louisville, Kentucky

Photo: Courtesy of Allen Bush

I garden on a one-third acre patch in a Louisville neighborhood, a quarter mile from an Olmsted-designed city park. I’ve got a deer trekking through a tiny rain garden, rabbits breaking tender stems on a chokeberry bush, and chipmunks slicing new shoots of butterfly weed with the precision of buzz saws. These critters drive me nuts, and I think sometimes it’s a pity I don’t own a gun.

Last week at the convention I was surprised at how sensuous it felt to hold a 357 Magnum revolver, with a 6-inch barrel and smooth stainless finish. If they made gun smoke that smelled like lavender, I might be won over.