BILOXI, Miss. -- A horticulturist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service has received a national award for excellence in gardening communication.

Gary Bachman was awarded a Silver Medal of Achievement as part of the 2019 GardenComm Media Awards for his Southern Gardening television program. Winners of the Silver Award are entered for judging in the GardenComm Garden Media Gold Awards.

GardenComm is an organization of professional horticultural communicators. Its annual media awards program recognizes outstanding work in broadcast, electronic and print media, as well as photography and graphic design.

Bachman, who also works with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, is a member of the Fellows of the American Society for Horticultural Science. His work will be honored at the GardenComm Awards and Honors Dinner on Sept. 7 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Along with Extension and Experiment Station horticulturalists Christine Coker and Patricia Knight, Bachman was also selected to deliver a presentation to the American Society for Horticultural Science in Las Vegas, Nev., later this month. They will discuss the disappearance of the Long Beach red radish and how their research led to its rediscovery.

Bachman is an Extension and research professor of horticulture at the MSU Coastal Research and Extension Center in Biloxi. Southern Gardening is a weekly segment designed to air within Mississippi television newscasts. It also is available in weekly newspaper columns, in radio podcasts and on social media outlets.

Bachman earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Clemson University. He went on to Ohio State University to get a doctorate. Before he came to MSU, Bachman was on the faculty at Tennessee Technological University and Illinois State University.

Visit the Southern Gardening homepage at http://extension.msstate.edu/shows/southern-gardening.