The men who spent their careers running into buildings in Mobile spent this week planting apple trees behind one. Members of the Mobile Fire Retirees Association took on a service project at the Mulherin Home, planting fruit trees and building new structures for the residents there.
Starting in the Garden
The group got to work Monday. Randy Reed, president of the Mobile Fire Retirees Association, said volunteers planted several varieties of fruit trees to replace ones the home lost in a recent cold snap.
“We’re planting trees. We’ve got a lot of fruit trees. They had one or two, but they died in the cold a year or so ago. So, we’re putting in apple trees, blood oranges. We’re putting in Meyers lemon and peaches,” Reed said.
The cold snap Reed referred to is the kind of event Gulf Coast gardeners have come to expect in the cooler months. While South Alabama’s climate is generally mild, hard freezes do reach the Mobile area on occasion, and tender citrus and subtropical fruit trees are among the first plants to suffer. A mature orange or lemon tree can take years to replace, which is why the retirees chose to replant a mix of varieties rather than a single type — spreading the risk so a future freeze is less likely to wipe out an entire harvest at once.
The Detail That Matters Most
Beyond the trees, volunteers built a new shed and a set of raised garden planters — and the reason for the raised planters is the part of this story worth sitting with.
“We’re building raised planters for them to plant their gardens in,” Reed said. “They wanted a garden, but they have people in wheelchairs. So, it needs to be handicapped accessible where they can get to it. So, we’re raising them up. We’re building them out of barrels.”
Residents did not want to watch a garden. They wanted to garden. The difference between those two things is roughly 30 inches of height, and a group of retired firefighters who thought to ask.
Raised beds built from repurposed barrels bring the soil to chair height, letting a resident in a wheelchair pull up, reach in, plant, weed and harvest without assistance. It is a small piece of engineering that converts a passive amenity into an activity someone can actually own. For adults with disabilities who live in a group setting, the ability to participate directly in growing food — rather than simply receiving it — is a meaningful shift from passive care to active engagement.
The concept of accessible raised-bed gardening has gained traction across the country as communities look for low-cost ways to make outdoor spaces usable for people with limited mobility. Using repurposed barrels, as the retirees did, keeps the cost down while producing a sturdy, food-safe container once properly lined. A barrel cut in half and filled with soil puts the planting surface at a height where someone seated can work comfortably for an extended period, and it keeps the gardener off the ground, away from damp soil and the strain of bending.
A Request From the Home
Reed said the project carries a broader message. With more than 30 residents at the Mulherin Home, food costs run high, and the facility welcomes donations of fresh produce from home gardeners.
That is a straightforward ask with a straightforward answer. Gulf Coast gardens in July produce more tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and peppers than any household can eat, and much of that surplus ends up on a compost pile or a neighbor’s porch. There is a facility in Mobile with more than 30 residents that would be glad to have it.
The Mulherin Home is one of a number of residential facilities in the Mobile area that serve adults with disabilities, providing a structured living environment where residents can be supported while maintaining as much independence as possible. For a home of that size, fresh vegetables represent a double benefit: they lower grocery costs and they add variety and nutrition to meals. A single productive summer garden can supplement a kitchen with a steady supply of produce that would otherwise have to be purchased.
About the Mulherin Home
The Mulherin Home is a longstanding Mobile residential facility serving adults with disabilities. Community groups looking for a service project, or gardeners with more produce than they can use, can contact the home directly.
The Larger Point
Firefighter retiree associations exist in most cities, and they tend to be quiet organizations that meet, keep in touch and bury their own. The ones that go looking for work in the community — that show up in July heat with post-hole diggers and lumber — are doing something with their retirement that not enough organizations do.
The Mobile Fire-Rescue Department has served the city for generations, and the men and women who retire from it carry decades of practical skills — carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, and the kind of problem solving that emergency response demands. A service project like the one at the Mulherin Home puts those skills to use in a way that retirement ceremonies and reunion dinners never quite capture. Building a wheelchair-height planter is, after all, mostly carpentry and common sense, and few groups have more of both than a crew of retired firefighters.
Volunteer efforts of this kind are a quiet but important part of life in Mobile and across the Gulf Coast. From church groups and civic clubs to retiree associations and neighborhood gardeners, a network of informal help keeps many local institutions running. Group homes, food pantries, senior centers and community gardens all depend on people who show up without being paid, often with skills earned over a lifetime of work.
For the residents of the Mulherin Home, the immediate payoff is concrete: new fruit trees that will bear in coming seasons, and garden beds they can tend themselves. For the retired firefighters, the payoff is the older kind — the knowledge that the training and habits of a working life still have somewhere to go. And for anyone in Mobile with a backyard tomato plant producing more than the family can eat, there is now a clear answer to the annual question of what to do with the surplus.