She’s there in the vintage vase you set on your dining room table. And in the lilacs you pick from the bush you planted together.
Moms have a way of leaving their touch on the homes and hearts of future generations. To celebrate Mother’s Day, we asked readers to share stories about how their mothers influenced their own decorating or gardening styles.
Here we share just a few of the many stories we received, all of them filled with memories and love. Sit back, read them and think of Mom.
• May Klisch, Milwaukee:
I grew up in equatorial Singapore, with a lush garden full of fruit trees and Asian herbs in our first home. As long as I can remember, we had two tall trees that gave us shade, but the rest of the garden was chock-full of all things edible: three mature rambutan trees yielding sweet, juicy fleshed fruit like lychees, except they had red or yellow hairy skins. These were favorites of my mother’s, as she grew up in a well-to-do family in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with all sorts of exotic fruit available from their private garden at any time, and no doubt she and my father were determined that our relatively small suburban plot would yield whatever it could. . . .
I never saw my mother garden, meaning that she wasn’t ever bent over the beds putting seeds or plants down, nor do I recall her ever having dirt under her always perfectly manicured nails. However, she certainly knew how to make the most of the garden’s harvest, and it seems now almost effortless how she either directed (my father) or others to coax so much from our limited space.
In my own kitchen garden, I always hold great optimism that I can get just a couple more seeds or plants in that raised bed. Abundance and fertility – I think these are two of my mother’s gifts to me, in the literal garden and in the garden of life.
• Cynthia Zarazua, instructor, International Learning Center, Neighborhood House of Milwaukee:
I’m a very eclectic person. I inherited this trait from both my parents, but mostly from my mom. I grew up poor in Milwaukee with eight siblings. With few resources, my mother limited her enormous creativity to indoors. My mother would crochet her own lace curtains, form/color her own pottery, and whenever she would find cheap paint, we would come home to our living room being a whole new color. We had at least 10 plants to each room, all of them different colors and impeccably cared for.
At first, my mother’s taste embarrassed me. But as I grew up, I learned that her ability to be creative while being broke is a tremendous and viable skill. She would teach us how to make all of our own clothing. In high school, I got kicked out of school for wearing a halter top. The teacher said, “I’m going to tell your mother!” I said back, “Go ahead, she taught me how to make it. . . . “
Today, I have about 17 plants to each room, most of them housed in pots that either myself or my mother made. You learn a lot from being broke, and my mother lives on in every bright color and bloom that I now live in.
• Dawn R. Mackey, Pewaukee:
How does one know what traits are inherited or which are learned behavior through personal experiences? I believe it’s a little bit of both. I can say this because my mother has been deceased for the past 34 years. She died on my 15th birthday, yet I feel her presence, wit and style on a daily basis.
My memories are many of her beauty and fashionable style shining through, even as she fought her battle against juvenile diabetes. She lost her eyesight when I was in second grade but never failed to have my brothers and me make sure her nails were painted. She wore perfume with beautiful nightgowns, always a lady.
Through pictures, I see her sense of style: Furniture placed perfectly and maybe a little over the top. Everything matched and had its place, as is true for my own sense of decorating. My oldest daughter states I am “froo-la-la” in my tastes. To me, I am just girlie and love to do my own thing, which I do believe comes from my mother. I was left some of her personal items, such as Depression glass, and beautiful rhinestone costume jewelry that I wear and decorate with today. It fits my style, and I feel this is a way to always keep her in my heart.
• Katie Zapfel, Milwaukee:
I hate gardening. When I was a teenager, my mother (a farmer’s daughter) filled my summer vacation with forced labor. Helping her dig flower beds and pull weeds until the wet dirt planted itself under my perfectly polished fingernails. Sometimes she even interrupted my lounging on the lawn chair to actually mow the lawn.
But our work was beautiful. Hearty hostas led to the front door, where purple petunias welcomed us home. Mom’s garden stocked our kitchen with red ripe tomatoes, snappy green beans and buttery sweet corn.
Soon I left for college. And when I returned home for the summer I vowed not to lift a green thumb in my mother’s garden. I was an adult now. I had rights. But then, something unexpected happened.
One morning, peacefully in her sleep, my mother died. Brain aneurysm. She was 51. And I was right; her flower beds went untouched that summer. Decades later, I’m a mom with, gasp, a garden of my own. I have pink gloves, a green plastic watering can and the relentless weeds. All just like my mother’s.
I still hate gardening, but I finally understand the joy of working the earth and the quiet satisfaction of feeding my family with food grown by my own hands. I feel my mother’s love. I see the excitement in my children’s eyes as they help me plant perennials and pick strawberries. And I savor it, while it lasts.
• Heather Gergen, Pewaukee:
When I moved into my first college apartment in Rochester, N.Y., I heard a knock at my front door. Imagine my surprise. My grandparents (from Ohio) were standing there with toolbox in hand and smiles on their faces. Every time someone in our family would move into a new place, Grandma would arrive as the boxes were being unpacked to work her magic, and I was no exception.
My grandmother was an interior designer who trained in Paris, but don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t a design snob. She figured out practical, do-it-yourself solutions for everyone on a tight budget and passed those skills on to me from a young age – before HGTV. When I was 8, we decorated an old Victorian-style dollhouse together. Our pièce de résistance was making fancy Paris-style salon chairs out of toilet paper rolls covered with satin and beaded with faux pearls.
The summer before I was married, we reupholstered my parents’ 20 year-old couch into a piece that lasted another 10 years. She taught me that a piece with “good bones” is worth fixing up . . . (and) how to arrange a grouping of photos on a wall. . . .
When we moved into our most recent house 10 years ago, she came and sewed curtains for our bedroom. They look as beautiful today as they did when she hung them on the windows. She passed away two years ago, but when I see her beautiful touches throughout my home, I think of the love showed to all of us by teaching us to live by her example.
• Jim Bartelt, Milwaukee, owner of Jim Bartelt Interiors:
My mother died when I was a teenager, and eventually my father remarried. I did menial jobs and was so unhappy.
My stepmother said, “Any room or décor you put together is always so good and unique. I think you should go to interior design school.”
For the first time in my life I actually listened and went to design school in Chicago, and here I am.
Thanks, Alyce.
• Barbara Johnson, West Bend:
My mom is one of those people who seems to have been born with what some would call “effortless style. . . . ” When I was about 5 or 6, I began to notice Mom’s skill in creating appealing vignettes throughout our home. . . . The little odds and ends she found to accessorize the room were placed on tables, shelves and walls in ways that compelled you to examine them more closely. . . . To this day, when I set something on a table or shelf or hang something on a wall in my own home, I think of Mom and the care and consideration she’d take in its placement. After decades of contemplating what skill it is that she possesses or process she employs that allows her to achieve these desirable effects, I’ve come to the conclusion that it boils down to the fact that everything that my mom does is done with love.
• Kathie Bernstein, executive director, Jewish Museum, Milwaukee:
Mother and I loved to visit Goodwill, and I have a couple of pieces of furniture from there as well as some true heirlooms from my family. My decorating style is really eclectic because I also have some contemporary pieces, too. I appreciate having well-used pieces. For me, the history of an object is so interesting and nearly everything has a possibility.
• Brian Brehmer, Milwaukee:
I thought I would write not about my mother but about my grandmother instead. My grandmother was more of an influence on me and my life than even I knew. When she passed away, there were various things that I incorporated into my own house and style.
The most important reminder of my grandmother sits in my living room in the form of a 19th-century reclining chair that sat in her home my entire life and which she gave to me for Christmas in 1998. I refer to it as my grandma’s chair, and no one is allowed to sit in it. At Christmastime, I decorate the tree with, among other things, ornaments that once sat on her tree.
Even some of my collections can be connected to her. I collected Nativity scenes because of the one I remember her having when I was a child. I collect an assortment of figures because I remember her having various little figures on display in her house. On my wall above my desk is a framed collection of 1893 cards from the Columbian Exposition which I uncovered after her death, and pictures of my late grandfather and father nearby.
How did my grandmother inspire me? She showed me that what you surround yourself with should not only make you happy but remind you of the important things in your life.
• Susan Finco, De Pere:
Geraniums. Big, red geraniums in pots on the patio. My mother, Rita Finco, always asked for geraniums for Mother’s Day because they were colorful and could stand up to the cool summer nights (she was a longtime Cudahy resident). But it wasn’t until we visited her birthplace in Asiago, Italy, that I realized why she loved geraniums so much.
Everywhere you look in Asiago, there are red geraniums in flower boxes, in pots and in gardens; literally thousands of them! My mother left Asiago with her mother in 1929 at age 13 to come to the U.S. I am sure the geraniums reminded her of Italy. Through the years, as I started to garden, I also planted red geraniums. Now, they are the main flowers in the pots on our patio. And every time I look at them, I think of her.
• Michael Gaffney, Milwaukee:
My mother was Patricia Farrell, nee Gaffney. She was a schoolteacher, as am I, and had a great influence on many aspects of my life. My mother had a great sense of interior designing and a great sense of personal style. While her preferred style was Colonial and mine decidedly modern, I learned from her that everything has its place and a great combination of shapes and colors makes a beautiful room. Everything was neat, clean, tidy and arranged in proper pleasing order.
It’s these observances around me, I think, that led to my very precise, almost formal styling to my career in flower designing. As a beginning designer, I often said to myself, “maybe I should have been a teacher.” Now I’ve combined both designing and teaching with eight schools around the country . . . and I “blame” it all on my mother’s love and “designer genes!”
• Susan Blink Patrick, Mequon:
We all have a hallway closet
I remember mine of old
My mother stored her magic there
and so as each season would unfold.
She’d pull a vase for pussy willows
When Spring was on its way,
And birthday candles
would appear for brother’s Midsummer special day,
When Fall arrived in burnished hues
a shock of wheat appeared,
upon the mantel it would go
for harvest time was here.
And Christmas brought forth candle rings
from depths of closet store,
and wooden Carolers also made their way
outside the closet door.
Our holidays and seasons passed
with beauty in our midst,
the little things,
the simple truths,
traditions never missed.
Today I’ve grown and in my home
magic still escapes.
My mother’s touch has passed to me,
my closet door awaits,
an opening for each season,
a touch of cheer to all,
dear memories surround me
as my footsteps near the hall!
• Karen Muth, Menomonee Falls:
My mom, Barbara Dohr Muth, has most definitely influenced my decorating style. Most notably, she instilled in me a deep appreciation for original artwork. Look at her house, and you will see walls covered with local (and national) artist works. . . . Come to my house, and you’ll see that influence. In fact, we both often buy from the same artists.
We cover local art festivals during the summer. And this culminates in September every year, the Sunday after Labor Day, when we both volunteer as alums . . . at the Mount Mary College Starving Artists Show. Mom influenced my decorating style, my appreciation for original artwork, my sense of volunteerism and so much more. I am eternally grateful for and proud of her style, and immensely glad I share that style.
• Terry Magestro, Oak Creek:
August always sets me into memory mode when I get the fresh scent of dill. That was pickling time, and the small cukes in the garden were ready to be made into dills and bread-and-butter pickles. The dill stalks were leaning to be cut . . . and the scent of dill could be smelled for days.
That was also the place Mom would have us go if we wanted to snack on something before dinner. She’d always say that if we were hungry, “go sit in the garden.” And to this day I will sit in the garden. Nothing tastes better than fresh-picked green beans! Because of that, I always had to have a garden no matter where I was living. Dill and cukes are the number one thing to put in so I can keep that memory alive. . . . Even when I go shopping, I will stop in the produce section and search out the dill just to relive that moment, that special time. A time I wouldn’t trade at all!
• Lori Van Meter, Muskego:
Although I love my mother dearly, if I adopted her gardening style, my home would be filled with last year’s straggly geraniums that weathered the winter hidden in my basement. (Sorry, Mom!) Somehow the joy of gardening skipped a generation, and it was my grandmother who instilled in me a love of all things green and growing.
As a child, I couldn’t wait to get to Neillsville to see what was blooming in Grandma Pearl’s garden. Her flower garden was the envy of her neighborhood and a source of constant wonderment to me as a child. Of all the glorious colors and shapes to emerge from her garden, it was the brilliant orange poppies that became my favorites.
As we both grew older and it became more difficult for Grandma Pearl to continue gardening, I would visit every spring to help with her garden. All winter long we would plan and scheme together over the miles to decide what should be added when the weather warmed. I’m not sure who looked forward to that last week in May more, but every visit lingers in my memory.
Grandma Pearl died in January, just shy of her 99th birthday. Her funeral was filled with all the glorious colors and shapes that had been so much a part of her life. Just for fun, there was even a silk flower hidden among the real ones. That, too, had become a part of our spring ritual: hidden silk flowers for Grandma to find over the summer.
Although Grandma Pearl is now gone, her memory is alive in the orange poppies that will soon bloom in my front garden and in the Georgia O’Keeffe poppy print hanging over my fireplace. And who knows? Perhaps a silk flower or two will be hiding in the garden for my grandchildren to find this summer.
• Nancy Hilrich Mueller, Mequon:
My mom always loved gardening for as long as I can remember. I didn’t get it. Why would anyone spend that much time digging around in the mud for a bunch of flowers? When I finally bought my first home, complete with my own mud, I started to take an interest in gardening. My mom came over all the time to help me figure out if that thing growing in the garden was a nice flower-to-be or a weed. One of our favorite ways to spend time together was to visit each other’s gardens and transplant bits from one to the other.
When my parents had to move from their home and into a senior apartment, we spent time driving around, appreciating gardens that we saw from the road. Our first drive every year was to see the scilla. . . . Last spring was the most beautiful spring I can remember. Nikki, my mom’s wonderful caregiver, made sure that she sat outside to feel the warm sun and see the beautiful flowers each day, but Mom didn’t feel up to driving around. She didn’t even want to come over to see my garden, as she always had. Mom died a few weeks later. My heart is broken, and I’m watching the scilla come up alone. But I will tend my garden, moving things from here to there and share what she taught me with my sons, grandchildren (some day) and friends, as she did.
• Barb Wisneski, Waukesha:
My sister, two brothers and I picking bouquet after bouquet of dandelions and leaving them by the front door after ringing the door bell and hiding. Then coming in after playing outside and seeing all the dandelions now lovingly arranged in a vase on the kitchen table.
Why, to this day I still think of dandelions as flowers rather than weeds!
• Margie Klein, Richfield:
When I look around my yard, I feel my mother’s influence in my gardens. Her love of gardening and flowers inspires me to create a beautiful yard for my family.
Growing up in the Depression era, gardening for her was probably more for sustenance than for leisurely hobby. Married in 1940, my mother lived in the same house and enjoyed gardening there for the next 49 years of her life. Looking back on my childhood invokes memories of playing in our backyard surrounded by her climbing roses, delphiniums, sweet peas, lupine, phlox, peonies and lilacs enveloping the yard with beauty and fragrance.
Photos of her five children were often proudly taken in front of her favorite blossoming flowers.
When I married in 1977, flowers from her garden graced our wedding reception tables. After purchasing our first home, Mom was happy to provide me with many shoots from her perennials and raspberries to begin my own gardens. Each of my subsequent moves to new homes included moving my cherished plants, which came from the gardens of my parents. The fragrant lilacs in my yard came from the farm of my paternal grandparents.
My mother not only loved the flora of her gardens, but the fauna as well. My dad built wren houses which were meticulously mounted on the picket fence near her flower beds. She loved to watch them build nests and listen to their song, as well as her beloved cardinals and chickadees.
When I weed my gardens using my parents’ hoe and spade, their memory and love of gardening warms my heart. As the wrens and cardinals sing their melodies around my gardens, I am reminded of one of my mother’s and grandmother’s favorite hymns, “I Come to the Garden Alone.” I have recently become a grandmother, and I hope to pass my love of gardening on to my granddaughter.
• Linda Suminski, New Berlin:
Today is April 15. For most, the significance of this day is filing taxes. For me, it would have been my mother’s 96th birthday.
Although she is no longer here with me physically, she is with me all over my home. I, like her, have my own collection of cards from her, my children, and my husband that are just too beautiful to toss into the garbage.
I see her in each holiday, like Easter, when I decorated the dining room table with bunnies she had given me through the years. The light that gleamed from her silver candlesticks surrounding those bunnies reflected the spark she added to my life in so many ways. The chair where she sat and enjoyed meals for 40 years’ worth of celebrations will always be hers. Walking by the china cabinet, I find several of her small vases that will soon hold lilies of the valley transplanted years ago from her garden into mine. . . .
She not only has helped me decorate my house and yard, but also my heart.
• Jessica Staff, Wauwatosa:
My mom has great style – always has, always will.
Due to the nature of my dad’s job, my parents found themselves moving to a new Midwestern city every five to 10 years. My mom has such a good attitude about each move. She looks at each new house as a blank canvas on which she can express her style. As a farmer’s daughter, she’s always on the lookout for a bargain. . . .
My husband and I bought an older home in Wauwatosa a few years ago. Although the house had “good bones,” it still needed lots of TLC. Thankfully, my mom came to our rescue. She helped us decorate it inside and out, and gave us priceless tips and tricks on how to update on a budget. She was happy to help us and ended up donating endless hours of free labor painting and landscaping.
Although not every paint color choice worked out (“pyramid gold” turned out looking like “cow poop”), and several plants have perished under our numerous black walnut trees, my husband and I have enjoyed the journey of homeownership these past few years. I hardly recognize the house from the day we purchased it, with most of the credit going to my mom.
It’s comforting to see my mom’s touches around our house. She is such a thoughtful person. Hopefully someday, somehow I can pay her back for all of her help. In the meantime, hopefully a big “thank you” will do!
• Stephanie Quinn, Glendale:
She has always loved rocks, pebbles, picking up special stones and beach glass while strolling the beach, and she would incorporate them into her little gardens, terrariums and pots. I have found that I do the same. My style is much more modern, but I love to find perfect organic-shaped stones or pebbles and place them in modern urns with cool papyrus grasses, or use tiny organic pebbles to place in the bottom of a vase with curly willow climbing and twisting out of it.
She also has always loved monarch butterflies and nature, and made sure to always plant native flowers in order to help preserve them on their journeys home and to Mexico, so she plants things such as milkweed, and coneflower and butterfly bushes.
Now, that I live on the river, it feels a little more “wild,” so I plan to add some of these plants to help preserve them as well. She also gave me 40 blue hyacinths when I turned 40, and that is my favorite flower, so it is special to see them pop up in the spring and reminds me of her.
She once gave me 38 white tulip bulbs when I was 38, and that was great to see them, too – but I moved from there, so now someone else gets to enjoy them. Maybe a 38-year-old!
• Leslie Huber, Milwaukee:
My mom influenced my decorating style by always taking pride in her home. Although Mom has never had any formal training, one would think our home had been decorated by a professional. Growing up, we would spend a Saturday morning going to rummage sales to look for great finds. . . . Mom knew how to create style on a tight budget. . . . If the color wasn’t just right, she’d fix that with a little paint. . . . A natural trendsetter, she was “recycling reusing” way before the Go-Green initiative. I see Mom’s style shine through me in something as simple as how my throw pillows are placed, how my pictures are arranged and how everything flows just right in my home. She taught me to always take pride in my home, find things that reflect my style and add my own personal touch.
***
And our winner is . . .
Thanks to all who sent in stories of how their mother inspired their gardening or decorating style.
Susan Finco of De Pere was randomly chosen to receive a collection of decorating and gardening books.
