·       Associate Professor Jim Mason is now the Department Chair of DMACC’s Horticulture Department

·       Former DMACC Horticulture Program Lab Assistant Diane Brockshus is now a Full-Time Horticulture instructor

ANKENY, Iowa—There will be some familiar faces in different roles in DMACC’s Horticulture Program this fall. Jim Mason, who became a full-time Horticulture Instructor in 2017 after serving as an adjunct instructor, is now an Associate Professor and Horticulture Department Chair.

DMACC Horticulture program graduate Diane Brockshus is returning to DMACC as a full-time Horticulture instructor.

Mason, originally from Belmond, has been involved in the Iowa landscape/horticulture business for more than 40 years.  He began his career designing city parks before starting his own landscape design/build firm in 1978.  In 2011, Mason retired from the business world and began teaching landscape design at DMACC as an adjunct instructor.  In 2017, he began teaching full-time in the DMACC Horticulture Department and was named Department Chair in 2022.

Mason, who earned a Landscape Architecture degree from Iowa State University, is a past president of the Iowa Nursery and Landscape Association and the Western Nursery and Landscape Association.

“The DMACC Horticulture program offers many exciting opportunities for students,” Mason said.  “Discovering the art, science and business of growing and caring for plants can lead to a very rewarding career.”

Brockshus, originally from Red Oak, enrolled in DMACC’s Horticulture program in 2015, after spending 14 years working for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources as an environmental regulator.  After graduating from DMACC, Brockshus joined the DMACC Horticulture Program as a lab assistant for two years and then spent three-years leading DMACC’s campus landscaping crew.

She left DMACC for a year to work as an Assistant Horticulturist at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden.  She is now back at DMACC as a full-time Horticulture instructor.

Brockshus is a former member of the Iowa Nursery and Landscape Association and is currently serving on the Iowa Urban Tree Council.

DMACC’s horticulture program offers two pathways—plant production and landscape/turf. Fall semester classes start on August 24.

DMACC Horticulture instructor Diane Brockshus (left) and Horticulture Program Chair Jim Mason pose outside the Ankeny Campus Horticulture Greenhouse.

(contributed press release, DMACC)