Monet's Gardens

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‘Monet's Inspiration’

Step into Monet’s world when you visit his home garden, which he built beginning in 1883 when he moved there with his family. Seeing Giverny, you understand the inspiration for Monet’s garden and plant paintings. The contrast of light and dark, and the effect of color are everywhere in this lush landscape. The flower gardens around the house are a casual affair, as Monet was more concerned with color and plant form than garden design. In 1893, he bought the property across the road and created the water garden, which has a distinct Japanese influence, but does not follow strict Japanese garden design principles. It is the water garden that was the inspiration for the series of water-lily paintings he made between 1901-1925. Monet died in 1926, and after World War II the gardens fell into neglect. Beginning in 1980, restoration of the gardens began, and now visitors can feel like they are stepping into one of Monet’s paintings.

4 / 5 Review by expert member Marty Wingate

‘A Garden of Colours’

I was not prepared for the beauty of Claude Monet’s gardens…they were truly inspiring and after a tour of the gardens go through the house and upstairs to his bedroom and look out the very same windows that he did, where he could see and reflect on the colours themselves. Here again, you will think of his famous water garden with its Japanese Bridge, its wisterias, azaleas and its pond. If, I can someday see M. Claude Monet's garden, I feel sure that I shall see something that is not so much a garden of flowers as of colours and tones, less an old-fashioned flower garden than a colour garden, so to speak, one that achieves an effect not entirely nature's, because it was planted so that only the flowers with matching colours will bloom at the same time, harmonized in an infinite stretch of blue or pink." The house, with its pink roughcast façade, where the leader of the Impressionist School lived from 1883 to 1926, once again has the colourful decor and intimate charm of former times. The precious collection of Japanese engravings is displayed in several rooms, as the master of Giverny himself had chosen to. The huge Nympheas studio, a stone's throw from the house, has also been restored. It houses the Foundation's Shop.

5 / 5 Review by expert member Donna Dawson

‘Art and the Garden’

Giverny was made by the great French impressionist painter, Claude Monet. It is not a large garden, but it is exceedingly popular with visitors and remarkably photogenic. Monet moved from Paris to Giverny in 1883, believing that all painting of nature should be finished 'on the spot', not in a comfortable studio. The garden has two sections: a traditional Normandy vegetable garden, near the house, and the Water Garden, on the other side of the road, which inspired the famous Water Lily paintings. It has a Japanese bridge, wisterias, water lilies, weeping willows, bamboos and herbaceous plants. www.gardenvisit.com

Review by expert member Tom Turner

‘Monet's Garden at Giverney’

Claude Monet’s inspirational garden is essentially two separate gardens. The Flower Garden is designed around the Grand Allee leading to the house and is a seasonally changing tapestry of colour that stretches from the ground into the sky via trellises and archways. On the other side of the railroad is the Water Garden, inspired by the landscapes of Japanese prints, and now an icon of garden design, with wisteria dripping over curved bridges, and waterlilies floating serenely on lazily drifting reflections in the lake.

4 / 5 Review by expert member Kent Ross

‘Excerpt from 'Why the lily pond looks a picture, too'’

By Max Davidson for the Telegraph

First published February 5, 2001

...In America, Giverny would be designated a national heritage site. The French expression is simpler, more expressive - un lieu de mémoire. It is certainly a place where the past and present are more than usually entwined. Great ghosts are stirring as you step out of the house and take your first look at the garden. I thought of Monet returning from his winter break in London or Venice, champing at the bit to see the spring flowers, fretting about the ravages of the frost.

If he loved his garden when he was in it, he was absolutely neurotic when he was away from it. Felix Breuil, the head gardener, would be left minute instructions about what to plant and when. "From the 15th to the 25th, start the dahlias into growth. If the peonies arrive, plant them immediately. Take care to protect the young shoots from the cold . . . " Letters home to his wife would be filled with anxious inquiries about the bulbs, the greenhouses, the state of the weather. Winter could be a dangerous time. In January 1910, when the Seine burst its banks, Monet was plunged into despair as he waited for the floods to abate.

He would have had nothing to worry about this year. The Seine has behaved itself. The frost has been merciful, the gales gentle. "We have had such a mild winter," says Gilbert Vahé, the present head gardener, "that everything is arriving early." Sure enough, the garden was already overrun with spring flowers: snowdrops and crocuses; narcissi and aubretias; little clusters of daffodils swaying in the wind. The most eye-catching were some exotically striped tulips, in the same colours as the MCC tie.

Gilbert Vahé has been in charge of Monet's garden since restoration work began in 1976. Before that, he earned his spurs in the very different surroundings of Versailles. He is a gentle, unassuming man, but he sets about his work with military precision, showing an attention to detail that the painter would have recognised and loved. "These will be planted out in two weeks," he says, during the guided tour of the greenhouse. "These must wait until 15th May." He orchestrates the garden like a great conductor, introducing each bloom in turn to create a symphony of colour.

Like Claudette Lindsey, he worries about the crowds. "The numbers of people are difficult to control," he admits. One of his many innovations is the use of strategically placed bamboo poles which keep visitors from straying from the paths without detriment to the overall aesthetic effect. Nothing is left to chance at Giverny. The illusion of nature running riot is only sustained by meticulous planning.

With just days to go before curtain-up, Vahé and his seven under-gardeners are working flat out to have everything ready in time. Benches are being painted, trees pruned, plants trimmed, weeds removed, paths cleared. Shadowy figures glide by with pitchforks and spades. And, of course, there is the water garden to attend to.

Entre nous, Gilbert Vahé is concerned about the water garden. He is a perfectionist and it irks him that the famous lily pond is not as clean as he would like. In Monet's time, the pond was supplied with water from the Epte, the little tributary of the Seine that runs along the borders of the garden. When the garden was restored, and the Epte was found to be polluted with factory effluents, it was decided to fill the pond with fresh water from a separately installed pump. But not even this water is perfect. Algae gather on the surface and, when I visited, great smudges of green stretched across the pond.

"What can you do?" says Vahé, with a Gallic shrug. "We have tried all sorts of different techniques. We have tried chemicals, we have tried emptying the pond and refilling it . . ." He looked so disconsolate that I was about to tell him the story of my own lily pond - a plastic one from the local garden centre which may never rival Giverny as a place of artistic pilgrimage, but does have lilies in summer and no algae problem. Why? Because there are three algae-guzzling goldfish swimming around at the bottom.

"So," continues Vahé, as if reading my mind, "what we have decided to do is buy some Chinese carp. We will put them in the pond for a few weeks and they should get rid of the algae."

Chinese carp in the pristine waters of Giverny? What would poor Monet have thought? Or am I maligning Vahé? Monet was a great gardener because he was a great innovator, prepared to scour the globe for ideas which would bring his great vision to fruition. Wasn't his love of the Far East famous? If Chinese carp had been needed, he surely would not have shrunk from deploying them. The pursuit of perfection, as Monet demonstrated, is a long road with many turnings. In his dogged, ingenious disciple he would have found his own genius mirrored.

At this point, Gilbert Vahé left to drive his wife to the next village. For 30 minutes, I had the water garden to myself - an unforgettable experience. I must have walked across the Japanese bridge a dozen times, for the sheer hell of it, like a naughty schoolboy trespassing on forbidden fields. I felt an overwhelming sense of privilege. Others must enjoy this view in the company of camera-clicking tourists. I could savour it as Monet savoured it: majestic and unspoiled.

Full Article from the Telegraph

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