When they write the history of environmentalism, Lady Bird Johnson will have a place in it. According to the New York Times obit: She was an early supporter of the environment and, in championing highway beautification, worked to banish billboards and plant flowers and trees.

The Lady Bird Johnson Park in Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, is an outgrowth of her First Lady’s Committee for a More Beautiful Capital. She founded the $10 million National Wildflower Research Center in Austin, Tex., which opened in April 1995 and changed its name to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in 1998. The center conducts research and provides information on plants, landscaping and conservation. For her environmental work she was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 1988. ::New York Times