At the corner of Randolph Road and Country Club Boulevard sits a home rich with history, belonging to Elisabeth and Chuck Branch. They moved from Mountain Lane in 2017, but for Elisabeth, their new home has always been more than a house—it’s where she grew up. After her mom passed away in 2016, she and Chuck moved into the family home, originally built in the 1950s, which they carefully restored while preserving much of its original character. 

The couple has four children and five grandchildren. “I’m sentimental, so I hated to leave the house they all grew up in, but they already had so many memories here,” Elisabeth says. 

Much of what makes the home special is found in the garden, where their family history takes root. Beginning in the 1990s, each May, Elisabeth’s mother would head to the beach and, on her travels back and forth, stop at daylily farms and farmers' markets, gradually building a collection of daylilies in the garden. “I don’t remember them blooming when she was sick,” Elisabeth recalls. Even years after her mother passed, they still had not bloomed. 

“I remembered mom saying, ‘When bulbs get too tight, you have to dig them up and separate them.’ What else was I doing in the spring of 2020?” she laughs. By 2021, no daylilies—and even by 2022, still not a single bloom. 

It wasn’t until June 2023, the week of their daughter Janie’s wedding, that all the daylilies finally bloomed. It was at their home that Janie got dressed and had her first look, and took photos in front of the blooming daylilies. Since then, they have continued to bloom, but never quite as beautifully as they did that week.

Their garden continues to surprise them, like a tomato plant that appeared out of nowhere last year—something her father always loved to grow. 

Beyond the garden is a home filled with memories—and surrounded by them, too. The Branch home bridges generations, where nostalgic home decor continues to serve the family’s everyday life, and every renovation has been shaped not just by change, but by what was already there. In many ways, it is still becoming what it has always been—home.

Upon entering the dining room, visitors are greeted by a watercolor portrait of the home painted by one of her mother’s cousins. Though it captures the home before it was remodeled, the painting remains strikingly similar to the house as it stands today.

Below the painting is an apothecary cabinet that originally came from Elisabeth’s grandfather’s pharmacy. Her mother turned it into a cabinet to hold her sterling silver flatware. Inside, among many pieces, is a cake knife that has cut every family wedding cake and birthday cake. “It’s made it to a lot of places,” Elisabeth laughs. 

“Mom put into my family, because she loved her family,” she says. “Family is what you have, and they keep you going.” 

Elisabeth says she loved the house from the very beginning. “My mother said, when we drove up to the house for the first time, I looked at the house and said, ‘My house.’” At only two years old, Elisabeth seemed to know it was her forever home.