As far as Laurie Reddinger is concerned, we all live in a “quiet coastal paradise” here in southern Alabama, where all of the hours of sunshine and the equal hours of tropical rains encourage her love of “growing plants huge and fast.”

Reddinger, a native of Louisville, Ky., and president of the Baldwin County Master Gardeners, grew up on a farm where plants were used for food, but she learned the magic of growing flowers soon after marrying her husband, Chris.

As she dabbled in establishing cottage gardens — that distinct style of informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and mixtures of ornamental and edible plants — her knowledge and experience in the garden grew.

When Reddinger and her family moved to Baldwin County, she found that her usual cottage garden favorites could not survive in the coastal climate and soil conditions of her newly adopted home state.

“Out of necessity and my love of flowers, I took the Master Gardener course to learn which flowers would successfully grow here and to learn all about the coastal climate and the soil conditions here,” Reddinger said.

She learned how to amend the soil to make it more hospitable for her favorite flowering shrub, crocosmia, with its bright red-orange petals and popping yellow center. She learned to love new flowering plants that would thrive in her coastal cottage garden.

English in origin, the cottage garden depends on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure for its appeal. The earliest cottage gardens were more practical than today’s versions, with an emphasis on vegetables and herbs; flowers were used to fill in open spaces. Over time, such flowers as primroses, violets, calendulas, roses and daisies became dominant features. Today’s cottage gardens, including Reddinger’s, include countless regional and personal variations.

These charming gardens seem to grow in a jumble of their own accord — flowering shrubs mingling with roses and herbaceous plants, along with seedlings rising up wherever they sow themselves.

Reddinger’s colorful cottage garden features beds of knockout roses, daisies, irises, lilies of many varieties, yarrow, coneflowers, zinnias and a towering group of 8-foot-high Swamp Flowers — “dancing daisies,” as Reddinger laughingly calls them.

“I strive for year-round color and a good mix of blooms and textures,” she said.

Reddinger aspires to be a “guiltless gardener” who has no problem pulling out a plant that doesn’t work; she is happy to try and try again. She smilingly describes her garden as Darwinian, where it is truly survival of the fittest.

Following her retirement as a teacher and consultant, Reddinger, like so many other retirees, has filled her life with the peaceful pastime of gardening and revels in the Zen of it.

She has learned to use adaptable native plants to add enchantment beyond her garden gate. Her husband recently crafted a sturdy wooden pergola on which Reddinger is training honeysuckle to climb and eventually provide sun-quenching shade over the poolside swing.

While enjoying the wide variety of plants available to her, Reddinger admits it can often be challenging.

“Gardening in the tropics is not easy,” she said.

Reddinger has cordoned off a nursery area in her garden where she nurtures baby plants until they are able to take off on their own and be relocated to a suitable area where they can thrive. Although she strives to play in her garden, she works every day at necessary gardening chores, including weeding, feeding and fertilizing as the need arises.

Cottage gardening lends itself to Reddinger’s style. She does not obsess over every fallen leaf or bloom — hers is not a formal, meticulous garden practice. If she travels and has to leave town, she wishes the plants well in her absence and will prune, pluck out or replant when she returns.

Although Reddinger is retired from teaching, she still teaches others daily through her involvement with the Baldwin County Master Gardeners. She said her phone rings daily with gardeners on the line seeking advice or her opinion on gardening matters.

In the small town of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, there exists a small group of healthy, vital folks who live and garden into their 10th decade. Much studied for the secrets of their healthy population, the inhabitants live out their long lives in a veritable paradise. While not materially rich, they willingly share hugs, assistance with planting and nutritious food with one another until their final days. They are a most lovable people, who believe “they will become all that they give away.”

Like these people, Laurie Reddinger gives much in her life — her time, her resources, her advice, her wisdom — in all of her roles as daughter, wife, mother, sister, friend and president of Baldwin County Master Gardeners.

May she, like the loving Vilcabambans, become all that she has given away.