By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Simply put, Tom Johnson is a character — a Georgia-drawling, camellia-addicted, big-hearted, fun-loving, hard-working, straight-talking character.

We tell you this because Johnson, who oversees the country’s largest camellia assortment at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, is featured as “The Camellia Man” in the latest and 50th anniversary issue of Southern Living (pp. 144-149). In the article, he’s as sassy and fun as we remember during a trip to Cuba with him, wife Mary Ann Johnson and more than a dozen others last August.