Bruce Turley, Recipient of the 2025 Mike Kenton Award

Bruce and a UF Landscape Architecture student discuss her plan

Bruce and Kaylee Wassmer at the South Florida Native Plant Seminar

“When people ask me about what we do and how we got where we are today none of the story gets off the ground in anyway without Bruce. From the first day I hopped over my childhood homes fence to work at Wilcox I had an energy and had a sense of place immediately. Bruce gave me the opportunity and a deeply meaningful experience at Wilcox though his love and passion for the Native Plant industry and small business. We had many long conversations about plants, business, and how life intersects with both over the years.
“When COVID hit Malory and I were already a year or so into our business venture Wise Hands and he was foundational in helping it achieve those early successful years. Since we began Wise Hands Bruce has retired from Wilcox, passed it down to new capable ownership that is taking it to a great new level and has “retired” to propagate for our Native Nursery here in his long time home of St. Petersburg.
“I tell everyone who asks me about our business and how we achieved success that having a mentor and a friend like Bruce is invaluable and I feel so blessed and filled with gratitude to have met him and have him as a part of our lives. We look forward to many more years of Native Plant success knowing Bruce is there for us to lend an ear, give a humble opinion, or a silent but strong nudge to get moving on something important.”
-Stefan Babjak, Wise Hands

“Bruce passionately and patiently connected my love of the outdoors to a fulfilling opportunity working with native plants, deepening that connection to nature and Florida. His reminder to frequently take a step back and remember why we do this has kept me motivated and entrenched in the desire to design native plants into our communities.”
-Zack Pitchford, Wilcox Nursery

FANN’s Board of Directors selected Bruce Turley, former owner of Wilcox Nursery in Largo, Florida, to receive the 2025 Mike Kenton Award. This award is presented to a FANN member in recognition of significant career-long impact on and service to the Florida native plant industry.

“His passion for native plants and sustainability is contagious; from day one of working for Wilcox, he made it easy to buy into the mission that landscaping should be approached from a different perspective. Planting native and holding true to sustainable practices is ultimately subscribing to something larger than just making outdoor spaces beautiful; it’s about helping the environment and our precious ecosystems, and I have Bruce to thank for instilling that same passion in me.”
-Davis Byrkit, Wilcox Nursery

Bruce started his career as an employee at Wilcox Nursery & Landscape, one of Pinellas County’s oldest continuously operated garden centers (since 1951). He began in the nursery and restarted landscape design and installation for the business, building on his Florida State University and University of South Florida education in creative arts and business. Steadily through the years, he converted much of the Wilcox inventory to native plants, became responsible for operations management and eventually bought out the business from his employer. He then expanded the business into employing a half-dozen designers and installation crews with a constant backlog in native landscape projects, both commercial and residential. Bruce successfully transitioned the business to ownership by an employee and officially retired, but stays very busy, propagating native plants for Wise Hands and serving on multiple nonprofit boards.

Bruce served as the Past President of the Florida Association of Native Nurseries (FANN) and the Past President of the Native Plant Horticulture Foundation, for which he is a founding board member. Bruce has been an active contributor to his local Pinellas Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society as well as many other Pinellas County civic and green groups. He regularly gives educational programs on native plants and their use in ecological landscape design, and is well known and loved for representing a variety of conservation and native plant causes at community events.