FRF - Fondren Renaissance Foundation

We are counting down the days until our 2026 Bottle Tree Garden Tour. You can purchase your tickets now at https://www.fondrengardentour.com/ . Thank you to Trustmark Bank for presenting our 2026 tour, and thank you to all of our garden hosts for graciously opening their gardens to patrons of the BTGT. Fondren loves all of you!

The garden of Suzie Cranston is today's feature. The extensive collection of birdhouses will command your first impression but any garden-lover will be drawn in by the cottage garden-style planing on either side of the picket fence. Roses, day lilies, enchinaceas, gaura, camellias, dahlias, cannas, tradescantia and ferns tumble together in a riot of color. The garden was inspired by the death of Suzie's son, Peck, and serves as a celebration on his life. "My yard makes me happy and people stopping by to visit it makes me even happier!", says Suzie.

We are counting down the days until our 2026 Bottle Tree Garden Tour. You can purchase your tickets now at https://www.fondrengardentour.com/ . Thank you to Trustmark Bank for presenting our 2026 tour, and thank you to all of our garden hosts for graciously opening their gardens to patrons of the BTGT. Fondren loves all of you!

The garden of Rebecca and Morris Thompson, our newest garden hosts, is today's feature. A cottage garden where fragrant roses mingle with neatly clipped boxwoods and billowing hydrangeas nod beside lush hostas and stokesias. Tucked among the blooms, charming birdhouses and a graceful birdbath invite feathered friends, filling the air with life and song. In the side yard, a fragrant herb garden thrives in the sun, where rosemary, thyme, basil and mint spill softly over their borders, releasing their perfume with each passing breeze - both beautiful and bountiful, a quiet companion to the more ornamental plantings.

Beyond, in the backyard, a flourishing kitchen garden stretches across neatly tended raised beds, brimming with crisp celery, green onions, Boston cucumbers, okra, straightneck squash, asparagus, tomatoes and lunchbox peppers - each offering a harvest as delightful as the garden itself.

We are counting down the days until our 2026 Bottle Tree Garden Tour. You can purchase your tickets now at https://www.fondrengardentour.com/ . Thank you to Trustmark Bank for presenting our 2026 tour, and thank you to all of our garden hosts for graciously opening their gardens to patrons of the BTGT. Fondren loves all of you!

The garden of Kelly and Thorne Butler, The Butler's Triple Bottle Tree Garden, is our feature today. Since 2014 they have had fun building on the beautiful gardens created by previous owners Jonathan and Gillian Viola. Jonathan built the pool, Gillian landscaped. There really isn’t a ‘theme’ to their gardens, just a happy medley of magnolias, crape myrtles, a crimson bark maple, a fig tree, ligustrum, sasanquas, camellias, pittosporum, boxwood, hosta, asiatic jasmine, confederate jasmine, ivy, fiddlehead fern, bamboo, gardenias, zinnias, three butterfly gardens, tomatoes, rosemary and mint. Their favorite spots are the bed of “Blue My Mind” dwarf morning glories and their back yard in early spring when it becomes a meadow covered with white wild flowers. In April their garden was certified as Wildlife Habitat No. 336,964 by the National Wildlife Federation.