A lifetime of gardening, privately, professionally and as a media personality on both radio and television, underpins the judging to be done by Bill Ward at the Katikati A&P Show's home industries competitions on February 5.
Bill, now a Waihi Beach resident, was for 12 years a vital part of the Maggie Barry Gardening Show on national television.
The show ran from 1990 to 2002 and was an important promoter of the first heady years of the Ellerslie Flower Show.
With Maggie by his side and armed with a horticultural science degree from Lincoln University, the South Island-raised horticulturalist advised the country's gardeners on "the dos and do nots" of vegetable gardening and all things horticultural.
His media career had begun years earlier as a 19-year-old with Hildred Carlisle's farming programme on which he advised on suitable tree varieties for farm plantings.