Everything you need to know about The GardenMama, or Biography of Nellie Neal
Nellie Neal answers questions from real live gardeners everyday on the radio, in her columns, and online. She also answers questions about gardening while waiting in line: at the grocery store, at the bank, and once, but only once, while waiting to use the bathroom at a concert. She is a lifelong gardener, a talkradio host with live gardening programs 5 hours weekly, a published garden writer and photographer, wife, and mother who grew her first begonia in third grade. Nellie is the National Spokesperson for Multi Bloom and Mega Green organic catfish fertilizers made in Isola, MS. She is known for her practical advice and practices what she preaches – tried and true garden cultural practices adapted to the 21st century concerns of time, space, and environmental awareness.
Known as ‘The GardenMama’ to her radio audiences, Nellie writes and speaks from a solid educational background coupled with a lifetime of gardening successes and failures. She learned to garden from her grandfather and went on to major in English and Horticulture at LSU in Baton Rouge (B.S., 1975). Her expertise in general horticulture subjects spans more than thirty years, and she takes pride in learning something new everyday. Nellie has grown plants, bought and sold plants, tested new varieties and helped sustain old ones. She has planted and maintained landscapes and movie sets, mowed lawns, watered greenhouses, waited on customers in garden retail, and taught gardening to students of every age. Nellie began writing from her home office in 1990 so she could be home when the school bus arrived. Now that her youngest are in college, she works full time for her business, GardenMama, Inc.
Her regular columns appear online at www.nationalgardening.com, in newspapers including the Clarion Ledger and Clinton (MS) News, State-by-State gardening magazines, and on her website, www.gardenmama.com. She has been a member of the Garden Writers Association since 1992, and a member of IATSE since 2000.
Nellie is the author and publisher of GardenMama, Tell Me Why, and author of Questions and Answers for Deep South Gardeners (BB Mackey Books) and How to Get Started in Southern Gardening (Cool Springs Press). She has contributed to numerous publications, including Ortho’s All About Greenhouses, Ortho’s All About Houseplants, Gardening for Dummies, and EHow to Do Everything. Nellie speaks to an average of twenty groups each year, publishes a newsletter about organic gardening, and advocates for farmers’ markets. Her new book, Organic Gardening Down South, will be published by BB Mackey Books in September, 2008.
Nellie and her husband, Dave Ingram, together tend just over an acre of garden that includes vegetables, fruit trees and blueberry bushes, ornamental trees and shrubs, a host of bulbs and perennials, and a greenhouse full of odd container plants. She has never met a plant she didn’t want to propagate, and disdains plant snobbery. Her favorite vegetable is a cherry tomato called sunsugar, and her favorite flower is whatever is in bloom today.
Need to get in touch with the Bird Man, Ken Hackman? His email address is khackman@comcast.net
