About

Firm Introduction

3. Fromme Design has a rich knowledge of the unique environments – possibilities, opportunities, and challenges - in which gardens for the public operate. Principal and founder Tres Fromme has over twenty-five years of creating projects of diverse scope, budget, timeframe and specialization. Every project mandates exceptional levels of horticultural artistry, pragmatic creativity, multi-disciplinary collaboration, extensive group participation, and concern for functionality.

Fromme is known for his expertise with facilitating team-based creative group process to create compelling and memorable places that invest participants in the outcomes. He is equally known for his wide-ranging plant knowledge; creative and rich planting designs; and spectacular floricultural displays.

His master plans and designs all creatively innovate within garden design traditions and the diverse contexts of each project. A proponent of experiential design, he choreographs relationships among people, spaces, and plants. Fromme communicates eloquently through graphics, writing, and verbal formats.

Fromme founded 3. Fromme Design in 2011 to focus on collaborations with mission-driven organizations offering public garden experiences for diverse visitors. Previously Fromme led the Public Garden Studios for MESA and StudioOutside, acting as lead planner and designer on all but a few projects. Experience includes a full range of project scales, budgets, and scopes – master planning, garden design, planting design, gardens for children and learning, floricultural exhibits, and Holiday light shows.

Fromme led planning and design at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania from 1996-2006 and the Atlanta Botanical Garden from 2012-2016. He held Cheekwood Estate and Gardens’ first Designer in Residence position from 2019-2020, an appointment continuing into 2023. He also was Designer in Residence for the Huntsville Botanical Garden from 2021-2023. Fromme holds a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from the University of Georgia and a Bachelor’s of Science in Ornamental Horticulture from the University of Delaware.

Fromme has collaborated with gardens throughout the country all of who have unique identities, diverse missions, and distinctive horticultural possibilities – from the Utah foothills to the Arizona desert to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern temperate forests.

Creative Approach

3. Fromme Design focuses on exploring and activating the full range of possibilities for people of all ages and backgrounds inherent in garden and landscape environments. All collaborations synthesize original ideas and unique combinations from a wide range of garden types, precedents, and traditions.

We believe that planning is ultimately a process of communicating and exploring possibilities about the future based on an understanding of a client’s heritage, present successes, and anticipated future. Planning and design processes may seem deceptively linear in outline, but will involve identifying and incorporating new ideas and directions as they emerge.

3FD are experts at facilitating team-based planning and design processes. Obtaining multiple perspectives from diverse constituents generates a multi-faceted understanding of the organization and the site is critical. Essential to this exploration is the ability to:

  • CATALYZE engaging dialogue and conversation

  • IDENTIFY the patterns emerging from the information, including the forms, materials, and other elements essential to a client’s aesthetics, identity, and sense of place

  • LISTEN actively and summarize concisely (in words and in writing) major ideas to confirm we have heard and observed everything accurately

  • Advance design and planning with the information

Expertise

3. Fromme Design has experience planning and designing diverse scope, budget, timeframe and specialization. Public garden projects mandate exceptional levels of creativity, multi-disciplinary collaboration, extensive group participation, and concern for functionality. Key expertise includes:

  • BOTANICAL GARDENS EXPERIENCE AND PERSPECTIVE
    Fromme has rich knowledge of the unique environments – possibilities, opportunities, and challenges - in which gardens open to the public operate. He has extensive leadership experience in all aspects of public garden planning and design.

  • HOLISTIC APPROACH TO GARDENS, PROGRAMMING, EVENTS, AND THE VISITOR EXPERIENCE
    Each garden is the expression of diverse yet inextricably linked disciplines and functions. Horticulture, enjoyment, exhibits, events, and the visual and performing seamlessly fuse with the physical site and facilities. All of this generates the visitor experience - and revenue.

  • HORTICULTURAL KNOWLEDGE
    Public gardens derive their power from skillful orchestrations of plants and spaces. Plants physically embody the history and character of a landscape, conjuring powerful visitor experiences. 3FD approaches gardens from the viewpoint of designers and plant lovers simultaneously.

  • CREATIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH EACH SITE AND ORGANIZATION
    3. Fromme Design approaches each project – site, people, program, and other factors – as a specific set of circumstances generating the planning and design process. A project’s unique form, style, and expression emerge from this process. 3FD partners with its clients in a synergistic collaboration to achieve what the land and the institution are capable of being.

  • INCLUSIVE GROUP PROCESS
    Collecting and synthesizing multiple perspectives generates a vibrantly comprehensive picture of a garden’s existence and operations in the past, present, and future. 3FD’s approach is intensely people-oriented and catalyzes participatory, inclusive, and communication-based planning and design. Fromme knows how to listen to many voices and identify common ground.

Visitor Focus

3. Fromme Design believes people often develop rich and long-lasting relationships with gardens and landscapes. These powerful experiences spark deep involvement and learning among people, plants, animals, and specific places. Accordingly, our collaborations seek to:

  • GROUND THEMSELVES in the distinctive specificities of the organization, property, and eco-region.

  • ENGAGE people’s minds, imaginations, spirits, and bodily senses as actively as possible. Projects appeal to multiple learning styles, abilities, and cultural backgrounds.

  • CATALYZE interactions between self, other people, and planted environments. Gardens allow for social and individual, active and passive activities.

  • FOCUS PEOPLE to transform the mundane into the magical and memorable

Client List

American Horticultural Society, VA

Atlanta Botanical Garden and ABG Gainesville, GA

Balboa Park Conservancy, CA

Bellingrath Home and Gardens, AL

Bok Tower Gardens, FL

Bryant Park, NY

Callaway Gardens, GA

Cape Fear Botanical Garden, NC

Carleen Bright Arboretum, TX

Cheekwood Estate and Gardens, TN

City of Winter Garden Tucker Ranch, FL

Clark Gardens, TX

Cleveland Botanical Garden, OH

Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, NC

Desert Botanical Garden, AZ

Fernwood Botanical Garden, MI

Franklin Grove Estate and Gardens, TN

Garvan Woodland Gardens, AR

Harry P Leu Gardens, FL

Highlands Biological Station, NC

Huntsville Botanical Garden, AL

Indianapolis Museum of Art (Newfields), IN

Jacksonville Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, FL

Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District, UT

Longwood Gardens, PA

Mead Gardens, FL

Meadow Brook Hall, MI

Mobile Botanical Garden, AL

The Morton Arboretum, IL

National Butterfly Center, TX

Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden, OK

Red Butte Garden, UT

Reiman Gardens, IA

Saint Mark’s School of Texas, TX

San Antonio Botanical Garden, TX

Shanghai Botanical Garden, China

Springfield Botanical Center, MO

Toledo Botanical Garden, OH

Tucson Botanical Garden, AZ

Tulsa Botanic Garden, OK

Turtle Bay Exploration Park McConnell Arboretum and Botanical Garden, CA

United States Botanic Garden, Washington DC

Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, UT

West Virginia Botanic Garden, WV