MaryAnn's Biography

MaryAnn Fink is a life long horticulture practitioner and green industry representative.  She is best known for her “Show Me Smart Gardening” seminars that discus best management practices for the professional horticulturist.  She currently advises builders, landscape architects and other professionals as well as the public on green projects that create eco-opportunities such as native wildlife habitats, storm water management techniques including functional / attractive rain gardens. 

She is focused on effective water use, Missouri native sampler gardens and eco-landscapes.  She promotes green roofs, rain gardens and native landscaping with water and energy conservation in mind.  She assisted with plant selection for the Mid America Regional Council’s (MARC) / Kansas City's 10,000 Rain Garden Initiative, and has consulted for Wellspring Development Company’s sustainable development, Rock Hill Trails in Wood River, IL and for Innsbrook, a Midwest recreational community dedicated to Nature.  She also consults for the Missouri Department of Transportation, and for Belcher Homes.  She has been a featured speaker for the Grow Native program, speaking at professional and public workshops throughout Missouri.  She is featured in the Presidential Who’s Who Among Business & Professional Achievers.
 
The founding coordinator of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Plants of Merit program and past executive director of the Missouri Landscape & Nursery Association. MaryAnn has also been the Environmental Horticulture Advisor for the Anita B. Gorman Discovery Center’s eight acre urban campus of Missouri native plantings.   

She appreciates the functional and ornamental aspects of native plants for the lower Midwest and encourages their use in the cultivated landscape.  MaryAnn consults with her clients, offering an “eco-perspective”  for green spaces.  As a conservation specialist, water conservationist and habitat practitioner, she incorporates exterior design with “smart gardening” techniques that are environmentally friendly and front door appropriate.  She is an arborist and ambassador for the National Wildlife Federation and a Grow Native Member. She encourages smart native plant use in cultivated and functional landscapes. 

 Check out her blog space, face page and listen for her on KTRS 550's Inside Out Show with Jim McMillian and John Shea on Saturday afternoons!  She features a plant a week with additional details on her website blog!

For more information about projects, speaking engagements or plant consultations, contact MaryAnn..