Imagine strolling along through a lush shade garden under the embracing arms of live oaks dangling Spanish moss along the way, as your path meanders by ferns as big as shrubs and containers and beds already sharing the bright early blooms of spring.

Retired Robertsdale High coach and blessed amateur gardener Ronny Malone has made that imagination a transforming reality that he and his wife, Carol, enjoy each day in their garden paradise along the Fish River in the Marlow community.

“It is so peaceful here,” Ronny shares. “Although I have no formal training, I love gardening and believe that a house is not complete without plants to welcome family and friends.”

Although coach Ronny has no classic gardening training, he comes from parents who raised him on a Semmes dairy farm, where they ate fresh-grown vegetables and the yard was shaded with old traditional Southern plantings of wild azaleas and Rose of Sharon. “My dad was a huge influence on me,” says Ronny. “I learned how to grow things and just to love being outdoors by watching him.”

While Ronny enjoyed and was very busy with his career as a teacher and coach in both Florida and Alabama, he relishes the four years since his retirement, which his has devoted to his gardening pastime.

“These last four years have just been the best,” he says.

Even though he is not trained in a horticulture or landscape curriculum, Ronny has mastered his successful gardening techniques as many a gardener has — through experience, trial-and-error and uncommonly good luck and instinct.

The heavy, lush ferns that hang invitingly throughout his shady landscape and reach out from all manner of charming containers were all started from a small, two-leafed fern that Ronny acquired from his mother in 1987 before she passed away.

“I don’t give up on anything,” Ronny says. “All of the ferns in my yard and all the many that I have given away came from that one, tiny two-leafed fern.” That one tiny fern has become a lovely, gigantic expansive specimen that is now 26 years old and takes up a sizable position of honor in Ronny’s front yard.

Ronny is not too proud to rescue throwaway plants that others may not want, and they all seem to thrive with his magical touch.

• Snowball hydrangea: a friend tossed it aside; now thriving
• Red hibiscus: found in a throwaway pile; now full of buds
• Sago palm: Seed found in New Orleans
• Loquat tree: Seed from a loquat Ronny ate in Florida; now a full-grown loquat tree

Also sharing a stately place of honor among the ferns out front is an impressive 7-year-old shrub covered in petite lavender flowers called Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

This showpiece — a majestic, eye-catching, 6-foot shrub — was nursed by Ronny from a tiny cutting in a paper cup into the lovely tree/shrub he enjoys today.

“Folks drive by and see it and just have to stop and ask what it is,” Ronny shares. “I am happy to show them and tell them all about it.”

Another growing thing that Ronny won’t give up on is the lacy green fern that hugs the branches and trunks of old oak trees.

“That is called an eternal fern,” Ronny explains, “because it will not die. Some folks think it is a parasite that lives off of the oak, but it is not. It lives off of the moisture in the air. I water it as far as I can reach to keep it green. It will dry up and look dead, but with rainfall or helpful watering, it always comes back.”

Even though Ronny’s riverside yard is small, he has made it into a sensory-pleasing palette of gigantic shrubs and flower plantings that literally stop traffic. Along with the plants he has garnered from others, Ronny’s garden includes a weeping willow and a bald cypress — both thriving in their riverside setting, a flourishing satsuma, a bottlebrush, nandinas, redbuds, some knockout roses, and gardenias full of buds. He enjoys planting impatiens, petunias, pansies, and various day lilies in both hanging baskets and beds that enhance his yard.

Ronny and Carol, his wife of 25 years, have lived in their raised house along the Fish River for 12 years. Although he is the gardener in the family, both enjoy their garden paradise together.

“I like to think about ways to enhance the house—I like to make things pretty,” Ronny shares. He spends about an hour each day hand watering his precious ferns and other plants, as well as weeding and mulching with clean pine straw.

It is a very good thing to find happy folks such as Ronny and Carol Malone living the good life in their retirement years—those golden years that, in Ronny’s case, are a deeply rich green.