by Louis Bonnette
Sports Information Director
Just when did Ronny Breaux realize he had a green thumb?
It certainly wasn’t during his baseball career as a catcher at McNeese State in the mid 1960s when his thumbs were mainly black and blue from catching the fast balls of Bobby Barnes, Dickie Wicks, Kirby Fontenot and Tommy Olney.
And it wasn’t during an 11 month, 14 day, 12 hour stay in Long Bihn, Vietnam with the U. S. Army in 1970.
But, he does have a green thumb and the proof is in the colorful garden he has put together at the Putter’s Golf Complex south of town.
There are flowers and plants of all shapes, sizes and colors and most of them are native to Southwest Louisiana.
He figures that there must be more than 60 varieties.
These flowers and plants highlight an 18 hole putting course at the complex.
“It’s been a project of mine for about two years,” he said. “One day my wife and I were talking with Teri (Kennedy, the daughter of complex owner Larry Thomas) and she said that it would be nice to have some plants around the entrance to the putting greens.
“That was the start and to this day, we have bought only 11 plants, six knockout roses and five encore azaleas. All of the other plants have either been donated, been plants that were discarded or plants that I have picked up out of road side ditches or brought from home.”
Thomas admits that the area was “pretty barren” when Breaux went to work.
“It was something that he volunteered to do and he’s done a fantastic job. It’s just unbelievable what he has done. You can’t slow him down.
“Ronnie Breaux is the type of person who likes to get things done. He’s not paid, never has been. But that is not what he is about. You couldn’t pay him enough for what he has done.”
Breaux’s admitted that his grandmother, mother and aunts probably enstilled in him early on a fondness for plant life.
“Growing up in Baldwin everyone in my family had gardens. We put up figs, corn and pears, all the vegetables and we all got involved. We did our own landscaping also because there weren’t any landscapers in our town,” he said.
“And, after school (he obtained his bachelor degree from McNeese in 1969 and his masters in 1972 after service in the Army) when I got married, I began to tinker more in the yard.”
Breaux coached briefly ? at both Franklin High and Hanson Memorial High ? and then took over the family’s grocery business. He later sold the business and became football equipment manager for McNeese State, a role he held for four years.
He’s now retired but not really. Breaux works as a marshall at the Gray Plantation golf course three to four days a week and is always available for volunteer work at the McNeese athletic department.
His pride, however, has to be his garden at Putter’s.
“I’ve gotten a lot of help,” he said.
Scott LeDet and Pete Adams at Gray Plantation were among the first to help him out and then there have been others such as Robert Turley at the LSU agriculture center and master gardner J. J. Window.
“From them I’ve learned a lot about layering and propagating and I’ve also gotten a lot of information off the internet.”
He admits that a lot of his planting is hit or miss, that he just tries to do things the right way in his transplanting and his planting and that he continues to learn as he goes.
Here is a sample listing of the plants, bushes, flowers, shrubs, trees, vines, etc., that Breaux has in his garden at Putters.
Trees: red maple, water oak, live oak, drake elm, acacia; Shrubs: Chinese fringe, Indian Hawthorn, azaleas, crape myrtles, shrub juniper, youpon holly, aulgustafloice; Vines, grass and cover: potato vine, Carolina Jessamine, trumpet vine, flowering potato vine, star Jessamine, monkey grass, lariope, dog fennel, pickerel weed, golden rod, sagittaricelatifolia, fountain grass, leopard grass, pink satin weed, needle reed grass, umbrella pampers; Flowers: day lilies, iris, snake lilies, amarylilia, spider lilllies; Wildflowers: spiderwort, yellow/purple cosmos, Blackeye Susans, giant sunflower, wild ageratum and Perennials: vinca, salvia, Mexican petunia, Mexican heather, Butterfly weed
