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Published on 08/09/16

'Garden Guru' Norman Winter to write columns for Georgia media

By Sharon Dowdy

Known across the South as the “Garden Guru,” Norman Winter has been writing about his passion for gardening for the past 20 years. Starting this week, his gardening columns will be distributed to media across the state by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Winter shares his gardening expertise through columns that appear in the Saturday edition of the Savannah Morning News and Sunday morning edition of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. He is also a garden writer for McClatchy-Tribune Information Service and feature writer for Georgia Gardening Magazine.

He has written several books including "Tough-as-Nails Flowers for the South," "Captivating Combinations: Color and Style in the Garden" and "Paradise Found: Growing Tropicals in Your own Backyard."

For almost 15 years, Winter was an Extension horticulture specialist with Mississippi State University’s research and extension center in Raymond, Mississippi. Today, he is director of UGA’s 51-acre Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens at the Historic Bamboo Farm in Savannah.

Since he joined UGA in 2013, the garden has blossomed with the addition of the Andrews Visitor and Education Center, a half dozen new individual display gardens and expansion of the December Nights and Holiday Lights that attracted more than 15,000 visitors in 2015. Winter credits the garden’s “incredible staff” for paving the way for this growth.

Follow Winter on Twitter @CGBGgardenguru and learn more about the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens at the Historic Bamboo Farm at www.coastalgeorgiabg.org/.

Sharon Dowdy is a news editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Authors:
Sharon Dowdy
Experts/Sources:
Norman Winter
Norman Winter, director of the University of Georgia's Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens at the Historic Bamboo Farm in Savannah, Georgia.
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