Bruce Turley, Recipient of the 2025 Mike Kenton Award

FANN President Eddie McKeithen presenting award to Bruce Turley at the 2025 FANN Native Plant Seminar at Stetson University, Deland FL.

Bruce and a UF Landscape Architecture student discuss her plan

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.

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.