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.
This was followed some years later with a one-hour, Saturday morning, gardening show on Hamilton's radio 12H.
"This is where I first met Maggie," he said. "I interviewed her for the programme."
At this time he was also lecturing at Waikato University and teaching night school.
Juggling three jobs while maintaining enthusiasm for them all would daunt most people, but Bill's love of life and his great energy are still very much evident in his life today.
His Hamilton radio show lasted around 25 years and covered the years he travelled to Auckland every Sunday morning to tune into the nation for the popular radio show Ruud Awakening with Ruud Kleinpaste.
Somewhere along the way he also managed to pick up a degree in philosophy and find time to be a Hamilton City councillor.
Bill is a staunch supporter of the yellow pohutukawa found in 1948 on an offshore island of the Bay of Plenty.
His efforts have been responsible for three of these magnificent trees to be planted on council land at the northern end of the Waihi Beach reserve behind the surf club.
A surfie from childhood, Bill is now one of a group of older surfies teaching water skills to school children. "We call ourselves Dad's Army," he laughs.
He is also still busy with professional landscaping and other horticultural projects.