Leonie Norrington was born in Darwin, Australia, and grew up on an Aboriginal community south of Katherine. She is a third generation tropical gardener and learned to garden at her grandmother's knee when the only fresh food available was home grown. Leonie works full-time as a journalist-writer. She is known to local gardeners through editing and publishing the magazine Greenants and Gravel. She has three grown-up children and one grandchild and lives with her husband at Noonamah on their farm where they have grown fruit, vegetables and herbs for twenty years.