The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Location: Nationwide

Website: www.tclf.org

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) is the only not-for-profit (501c3) foundation in America dedicated to increasing the public's awareness and understanding of the importance and irreplaceable legacy of its cultural landscapes.

Through education, technical assistance, and outreach, we broaden awareness of and support for historic landscapes nationwide in hopes of saving this diverse and priceless heritage for future generations. While TCLF seeks donations to support its efforts, it is not a membership organization.

Founded in 1998 by Charles Birnbaum, FASLA, TCLF achieves its mission by
Collaborating with individuals and local, regional, and national groups to understand and protect our landscape heritage and to reach the broadest possible audience. For example, TCLF is one of the American Society of Landscape Architects’ “partners in education”;

Training professionals, students, teachers, and the general public to recognize, document and safeguard America's cultural landscapes;
Serving as the nation’s largest and most valuable non-profit source of information about our nation’s historic landscapes and those pioneering individuals who have contributed (through design, planning and advocacy) to this legacy;

Raising awareness of and support for individual landscapes-at-risk; and

Recognizing and celebrating the efforts of owners, supporters and stewards of significant American places.

TCLF’s overall success can be measured by the millions of people who have learned about cultural landscapes through its website, publications and events—as well as through the growing national awareness of the importance of America’s cultural landscapes and the increasing efforts to document and protect this heritage.

TCLF’s core efforts include:

Cultural Landscapes as Classrooms -
teaching people to "read" the landscapes that surround them, to understand how changes affect these special places, and to become better stewards of our significant cultural landscape heritage.

Stewardship Stories -
recognizing individuals who share our vision of "stewardship through education" by working to raise awareness of cultural landscapes in their community.

Landslide -
drawing immediate and lasting attention to threatened cultural landscapes, sparking debate and encouraging informed, community-based stewardship decisions.

Pioneers of American Landscape Design -
chronicling the lives and careers of those who have designed our gardens, parks, streets, campuses, cemeteries, suburbs, and the innumerable other environments in which we live.

What's Out There -
raising the public’s awareness of the rich diversity and interconnectedness of our shared designed landscape heritage by providing context about these sites through an easy-to-navigate, searchable database.