The Nancy R. Turner Fund was established to honor the founding president of LALH, whose commitment to and enthusiasm for LALH were critical to its success. Generous gifts from the Turner children provided the base for the fund in 2012.
Nancy spent her childhood in the beautiful town of Auburn, in upstate New York. After earning a BA from Smith College, she married Richard L. Turner, with whom she raised four children in the village of Pittsford, in a distinguished c. 1840 Greek Revival home surrounded by a garden commissioned from the renowned landscape architect Fletcher Steele. She was active in many local organizations related to landscape and preservation and served as a vice president of the Garden Club of America. After her husband’s death in 1986, Nancy and her children founded the Viburnum Foundation to fund projects relating to historic preservation and literacy. She became the first president of LALH in 1992 and supported the organization generously until her death in 2018.
The Nancy R. Turner Fund assists in publishing books about American parks and gardens and has supported the publication of:
Writing the City: Essays on New York by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South by William E. O’Brien
Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma by Ethan Carr
John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner by R. Bruce Stephenson
New Towns for Old by John Nolen, with an introduction by Charles D. Warren
Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England by Frederick Law Olmsted, with an introduction by Charles C. McLaughlin