Norman Singer Endowment Fund

Applications for grants must be received by January 2, 2024. See application form below. Recipients will be announced at the meeting in Oakland, Calif.

Norman

About Our Fund

The NARGS Endowment Fund was set up in 1983 upon the recommendation of Norman Singer, the society’s secretary, and approved by the board in 1984. The interest accruing from the funds in the endowment was restricted to special projects, rather than operations of the society.  In 1992, the NARGS board adopted guidelines for use of the funds and a committee appointed to recommend grants.


Norman held various positions in NARGS including president (1992-1994), and he received numerous awards from the society, including the Award of Merit and the Marvin Black Award.


Norman served in the U.S. Army in World War II, assigned to Bletchley Park (U.K.) as a code breaker. He became a performing arts administrator in New York City, including Lincoln Center, and the Aspen (Colorado) Music Festival. He and his long-term partner, Geoffrey Charlesworth, whom he had met at Bletchley, retired to Sandisfield, Massachusetts, in 1981.


Norman died in 2001, age 80, and the endowment fund was renamed to honor his contributions to NARGS.

How to Apply
Endowment Fund Guidlines
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2025 Application
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Awarded

Year
Amount
Name

2023

$5,000
Marcela Ferreyra (Argentina): Publication and wider distribution of a book titled "Plants of Extra-Andean Patagonia, Patagonia Steppe, and Southern Monte."
$5,000
Don LaFond and Great Lakes Chapter of NARGS. Install a tufa rock garden and hypertufa troughs at the University of Michigan's Matthaei Botanical Garden.
$5,000
Paige Ransford (Massachusetts): Purchase interpretative educational signage, panels, and plant labels for the restored Franklin Park Zoo Rock Garden, Boston.

2022

$7,000.
Rancho Cistus Botanic Garden. Jeremy Schmidt (North Carolina), Sean Hogan (Oregon), Kenton Seth (Colorado), and Paul Spriggs (British Columbia) installed the first public crevice garden in Portland, Oregon in June 2022 during the annual meeting of the American Public Gardens Association, whose members will visit and see the installation.

2021

$4,000.
Kenton Seth/ Paul Spriggs : A book on crevice gardening in North America.
$5,000.
Tower Hill Botanic Garden (Mark Richardson) Study of rock gardens
$1,600.
Scraps-to-Soil Crevice Garden, Ursula Cruzalegui

2019

$10,000.
Juniper Level Botanic Garden
$1,000.
Evergreen Arboretum
$2,000.
Laurelwood Arboretum

2018

$1,400.
Jasper Johns: Goal is to elucidate the gene(s) responsible for adaptive alpine dwarfism in Aquilegia jonesii and to identify the genes responsible for growing it (soil drainage, composition, pH, watering and light schedules, etc.). This will contribute to the knowledge of how alpine plants grow in the wild but how they can be optimally cultivated in our homes
$1,100.
Green Spring Gardens, Fairfax County Park Foundation -Renovate degraded area of the existing rock garden by creating a new crevice garden area.

2017

$5,000
Juniper Level Botanic Garden (Raleigh, North Carolina) - construction of dry crevice and lime seep garden using concrete slabs to evaluate plants that normally die in southern U.S. gardens.
$2,500
Susann Nilsson (Mariannelund, Sweden) - field work on Pulsatilla in Asia and preparation of monograph.

2016

$5,000
Vojtech Holubec (Prague, Czech Republic) - printing book on flowers of the Tian Shan region of Asia.

2015

-

2014

$1,450
Dart’s Hill Garden, BC: To purchase plants for new tufa garden.
$1,450
Yampa River Botanic Park, CO: Purchase plants for new crevice garden and educational materials.

2013

$2,000
New England Wildflower Society. Funding to cover expenses associated with the recognition of the Trillium collections with the North American Plant Collections Consortium.
$2,000
Susann Nilsson, Amateur botanist with excellent references.  Funding required to cover travel and research in order to write a monograph on the Genus Pulsatilla.