Mary Irish is a garden writer, lecturer, and educator who lived in Arizona for 25 years. She is the author of many books, including Gardening in the Desert (also published by the University of Arizona Press). For more than a decade, she served as the Director of Public Horticulture at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. She has been a gardening columnist for the Arizona Republic newspaper and has served as a consultant on many large-scale landscaping projects. She now teaches classes and conducts workshops on a wide variety of topics in desert gardening.