Before publishing his first book, Mr. Ball spent 15 years in the human services field, including serving as deputy secretary for children and youth in the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare in Harrisburg and as director of Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth.
He was "close to alcoholism" and "a clinical burnout," he told an Inquirer reporter in 1985, before trading in a big budget and staff for "a quarter-acre and two cats" in Springfield.
Instead of the usual patio and barbecue, he and his wife, Liz, had an extensive vegetable garden with then-innovative raised beds and trellises. Two beehives on a second-floor deck produced 200 pounds of honey, a solar greenhouse kept plants warm, and a root cellar provided storage for vegetables.
Mr. Ball designed an automatic drip irrigation system and a three-bin system for composting.
"What literally gives me pleasure," he told The Inquirer, "is that I may have another idea, and having the idea, then taking it to the point where it's a product - a book, a garden system, a computer program."
He and his wife coined the term yardeners - homeowners who have lawns and plants to care for, but who aren't really gardeners. She shot photographs for several of his books and cowrote others with him. Even after they divorced in 1992, they remained business partners, and she helped produce his monthly Today segments, which were telecast until the late 1990s.
Mr. Ball grew up in New England and spent summers on his grandparents' farm in Canada. After graduating from New London High School in Connecticut, he earned a bachelor's degree in 1961 from the University of Rochester, where he met his future wife. He then served in the Navy on a destroyer in the Mediterranean for three years and was on the NROTC faculty at Brown University for two years.
