GARDEN SURROUNDINGS: Dear Mama…

4 days ago
3 min read

By Francesca Filanc, for Let’s Talk Plants! May 2026.

Francesca Filanc and her mother Pat Welsh. Photo credit: Francesca Filanc.

My garden is on a Mother's Day tour this month and I was asked to write about my mother, Pat Welsh, for the tour pamphlet. Unfortunately, this was too long for the pamphlet, so this is my article this month, a tribute to my mother, a love letter to her for being such a wonderful mother, and I feel I owe my talents and my passions to my wonderful mother.

Pat Welsh enjoying her daughter's garden. Photo credit: Francesca Filanc.

Dear Mama,

Thank you for always being such a wonderful mother. When we were little children, you gave us each a plot of land in which we could grow vegetables. I’ll never forget the fun of seeing carrots, celery, and other vegetables that I planted from seeds come up. Such a feeling of glee and excitement would well up inside of me, and I remember washing the vegetables and being able to eat them right out of my own vegetable garden. This started a lifelong love of gardening.

When I was little, you saw something artistic in me and taught an art class in the garden. I still remember two paintings that I loved painting when I was only seven or eight years old. One depicted a circus. I painted one of the elephants with one of his eyes in his ear. When I saw the mistake I made, I wanted to fix it, but you remarked,

“Oh no Francie dear, that makes the painting ‘Picasso-Esque’.”

Another painting depicted a fairyland with fairy houses in a garden and several fairies flying about. I still remember how much I loved painting those two paintings. You had them framed and gave them to me for my oldest daughter’s room when she was born.

When we were little, you used to think of wonderful games; one time we were hobos and went for a picnic with sticks, holding our lunches over our backs.

One thing that I loved was in the summertime you took us to the beach every single morning. We would come home and take a bath and then have a delicious lunch in the patio. After lunch we would paint in the garden.

Pat Welsh. Photo credit: Francesca Filanc.

Some days we went on outings. There was a dairy farm out on highway 78 over where May Co. and that whole shopping center was later built. We went to the dairy, and I’ll never forget, I was allowed to put my hand in the mouth of a calf. I just loved that so much. You would take us to the zoo, and we did all kinds of fun activities.

Mama, you were always busy running around working in the garden, but you always had time for us. Even years later when you were a career woman and on TV and wrote your books if I called you, you would stop writing and listen to my problem.

You have given me so many gifts that I’m so grateful for; like you I love to write, I love to garden and I love to paint.

Pat Welsh and her daughter Francesca Filanc in the garden. Photo credit: Francesca Filanc.

Most of all what I’m so grateful for is what a kind, loving, fun mother you have always been and I’m so grateful that you’re still around to go out to dinner together or to come over and look at the garden which you tell me you love doing, like my grandmother, your Mum, used to love to do with you.

I’ll never forget a couple of years ago you and I were out to dinner at the Fish Market in Del Mar and you remarked,

“Francie, I forgot to tell you the other day, I couldn’t remember what month wisteria blooms, so I googled it and one of your San Diego Horticultural Society articles came up talking about wisteria.”