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The John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden in Mill Neck, a 7-acre wooded preserve inspired by classic Kyoto gardens, is in danger of closing unless it can find new funding sources, according to its director, Stephen Morrell.
The garden, created after a 1960 visit to Japan by Humes, former U.S. ambassador to Austria, and his wife Jean on a corner of their estate, opened to the public in the mid-1980s after Humes' death.
The not-for-profit foundation established and endowed by Humes before his death recently ended a 20-year relationship with the Garden Conservancy, which in 1993 stepped in during a prior financial crisis to help raise funds, and manage the garden's operation.
The Conservancy recently shifted its own priorities, and the Humes garden decided to end its management role at the end of last year.
Now, Morrell said in a statement, and in a letter to the garden's membership, the foundation's dwindling endowment and outside support has left it short of funds needed to maintain the garden.
Morrell said that the foundation's goal was to keep the garden open through 2015 while it explored options for "its ongoing preservation: seeking a new partner, major benefactor, or other like-minded nonprofit as well as ongoing fundraising, perhaps in collaboration with an area university, other public gardens,...