He might not be Alan Titchmarsh – and he’s certainly no Charlie Dimmock – but Bill Willis has green-fingered staying power.

The popular columnist spotted a gap in the pages of the South Wales Evening Post in 1946 and has been handing out valuable gardening tips ever since.

But now he’s decided to bow out after 54 years – and leave behind the country’s longest-running regular columns.

He’s taken stock of his plot aged 88 and decided to pension off his typewriter.

The closing of his In the Garden column marks the end of a lifetime association with the Evening Post.

Bill retired as deputy chief sub editor in 1979 after a record 52 years as a journalist on the paper.

His career began at 15 as a proof-reader on the Cambrian Daily Leader, a fore-runner of the Post, in 1927.

He worked with Dylan Thomas, when the writer began work on the paper and subsequently moved on to literature, while Bill stayed put to become a sub-editor.

Bill served in the RAF during the war and returned to the Post when he was demobbed. He started up the gardening column at a time when families were getting back to normal life and spending more time in their homes.

The Post bid farewell to Bill in a feature on his gardening in a Family Post special yesterday (Tues).

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