Diana Maranhao

[from author's blog]
Diana (Dee) Maranhao has been an active member of the horticulture/landscape industry for over 35 years. The bulk of her professional career was spent in higher education, serving as Horticulture Program Manager, Nursery Production Specialist, and finally as an educator specializing in Xeriscape-Low Water Use Landscaping, Nursery Production and Plant Propagation. She developed and taught “Xeriscape for the Classroom” and presented the monthly, full day workshop to K-12 educators to give them the tools to bring water conservation gardening techniques to children in the classroom. Diana also presented a full-day, intensive, hands-on workshop for educators on “Building School Gardens”, which addressed the process for designing school gardens, grant search, and educational program development.

Upon retiring from her long tenure in education, Diana has served as horticulture editor and project editor for numerous educational texts, magazines, garden guides and horticulture book titles. She has been a regular featured garden columnist for over ten years, authoring hundreds of gardening and horticulture articles for the public and the horticulture industry. She is the author of Rocky Mountain Fruit and Vegetable Gardening (Cool Springs Press, 2014). Water-smart Gardening is scheduled for release in Fall of 2015 and Southwest Gardeners Handbook is scheduled for release in Spring of 2016.

Diana and her husband, Steve, live and garden in southern Utah. Her gardens are her muse, serving as a constant education and a source of inspiration for her writing. Combining her professional background and education with the constant learning experience the gardens provide serves to encourage, to teach and to inspire others to garden, and to do so with water conservation and sustainability of natural resources in mind.

Diana has an Associates in Science degree in Ornamental Horticulture, completion certificates in Copyediting and Merchandising, and holds a life-time teaching credential from California specializing in Ornamental Horticulture. She is currently the Administrative Assistant for the Desert Green Foundation, Las Vegas, a non-profit group that presents a yearly educational conference for professionals to encourage continued learning in the landscape industry.