REG Moule, one of Worcestershire's best known gardening figures, has been presented with a long service medal by the Royal Horticultural Society to mark 42 years in the trade. Mr Moule, who is manager of David's Nurseries at Martin Hussingtree, near Worcester, has become a familiar name through his radio broadcasts and writing and has received no less than five garden broadcasting awards - the Oscars of garden broadcasting - from the Garden Media Guild.

He said: "This long service award is just a milestone along the way, it does not mean I am about to retire, so you will still be able to hear me on BBC Hereford & Worcester and visit me at David’s Nurseries for a few years yet."

Mr Moule was born and still lives in Drakes Broughton, near Pershore, where his father was a market gardener, so he was brought up in horticulture. However, it took an inspirational rural science teacher at Pershore County Secondary School called Ian Shepherd to awaken the dormant gardener inside him. From school he went to Pershore Institute of Horticulture, where he was taken on as an apprentice.

“ I was very lucky to go there when I did,” Mr Moule added. "I had five years of the best horticultural training on the planet, which set me up as a properly qualified member of the gardening trade."

On leaving Pershore in July 1972 he went to work, as assistant manager at Mythe Nurseries in Tewkesbury, becoming the manager two years later, a job which he held for a further 25 years, during which time he worked for two different owners and saw the nursery become Tewkesbury Garden Centre. In 1999 Mr Moule left Tewkesbury to become the gardening adviser for Hurrans Garden Centres, travelling around the group's seven centres providing gardening advice in person and on the internet. In 2007 he left Hurrans to become manager of David's Nurseries.

His media career started during his time at Tewkesbury, first through speaking at gardening clubs, followed by writing for gardening magazines, then came local commercial radio followed by BBC local radio in 1988. Mr Moule had seven years on the T.V programme Gardeners’ Diary over the late 1990’s and early 2000’s and he is still one of the few people to answer live gardening questions on national radio, after spending two years as the gardening expert on the Debbie Thrower Show on Radio 2.

Among his many accolades, RHS director of shows Steven Bennett presented Mr Moule with the Local Radio Garden Broadcaster of the Year award at the 2000 Chelsea Flower Show and he has also worked for the RHS as a freelance gardening adviser.

The RHS long service award was presented to Mr Moule at David's Nurseries gardening club by Jonathan Ray, his co-presenter on the Gardening Show at BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester and nursery owners David and Sarah Beauchamp along with the rest of the team gave him an engraved stainless steel spade to mark the occasion.