Retired Presbyterian minister Julian Walthall took excellent care of his flocks for 39 years until retirement, when those days of unscheduled luxury beckoned to him. After serving churches in West Virginia, Foley, Mobile and Spanish Fort, Julian turned his attention to growing plants and improving his community.

"I grew up on a farm in a little town in the Black Belt region of Alabama," Julian explains. "Dad was the manager who oversaw our dairy farm and Mom grew our vegetables — butterbeans, corn and peas — and also put them up for the family to enjoy year round. She also grew the prettiest flowers and had an antique rose garden that was just beautiful," he adds with a smile.

"Our old home place is still there in Beulah and my wife and I make the trip up a few times a month to care for it. I purchased six antique roses a while back," he says, "and planted them at the old homestead to replace my mother's overgrown ones, and they are doing beautifully. The soil is so sweet there in the Black Belt — no acidity," he adds.

To help fill those golden days of retirement, Julian decided to learn more about nurturing different living things — plants — and signed up for the Baldwin County Master Gardener Class in 2013. An accomplished graduate, Julian loves gardening for its serenity, beauty and the opportunities it provides to establish new friendships with fellow gardeners.

Julian and wife Carolyn's Daphne home is surrounded by trees and lots of shade, so he does plenty of container gardening and raised beds. His raised vegetable beds are bordered by recycled ballast stones, repurposed from an old ship. At this time of the year, Julian enjoys growing broccoli, collards, Swiss chard, lettuces and carrots in those beds. A Meyer lemon tree is thriving and producing its tart treasures in a partly sunny area by the vegetable beds.

"I seem to do better growing a fall garden, when it's cooler," Julian says. "I really enjoy growing and eating leafy vegetables. I seem to have better luck with them."

Julian's lovely craftsman-style home, he and Carolyn designed themselves, is accentuated with azaleas and native plants that he knows will do well in our region. They all fit in so beautifully with the backdrop of woods surrounding his home.

On the front porch, charming containers of such favorites as root beer plant, fire-in-the-woods, crown of thorns, oxalis and that perennial favorite, begonia, greet visiting family and friends.

Julian doesn't just grow the vegetables he enjoys-he is also an accomplished cook. He uses the early leaves of the Swiss chard in creative, healthy salads and his homegrown collards are steamed with a little garlic to make a tasty treat.

"Up in the Black Belt of Alabama where I grew up," Julian shares, "many families grew cushaws, which are a fall squash. They are a little sweet and are delicious."

Cushaws do indeed have a sweetness to them but there is an earthiness there, as well. They are often used alongside pumpkins and hay bales as fetching fall décor.

Alongside gardening in his retirement, Julian loves to read biographies and visits with his two grown sons.

One son lives in New York," he shares, "and the other in Italy. They got about as far away from us as they could," he adds laughingly.

As a master gardener, Julian has found many ways to cultivate friendships with people as well as plants. He was asked, along with some others, to clear out invasive plants along the ponds at Weeks Bay and put in beds containing representative native plants.

A couple of years ago, while enjoying a sunset walk with his wife along McMillian Bluff in Daphne, Julian noticed that the bluff was becoming overgrown and needed attention to be what it was meant to be. He approached the city of Daphne with an offer to clear the area out and plant natives along the pathway. The city agreed and Julian, along with other master gardeners, cleared the area of weeds and replanted it with beautiful thriving natives such as azaleas, American beautyberry and ferns. It is now open to the public and provides an inviting walkway down to the bay with a charming variety of native plants accentuating the path.

Still serving, although in a different way, Julian Walthall is the happy gardener hailing from the Black Belt region, now living in Baldwin County where he continues the worthwhile pastime of nurturing both plants and people.