Giverny Impression

Are you curious about flower names? Would you enjoy a picture a day of Giverny’s flowers? This new perpetual calendar is great to get familiar with the flowers that grow in Claude Monet’s gardens.  I’ve sorted out my best pictures and identified the flowers with the help of the Giverny gardeners. Botanical name, common name, even French name and photo date are specified for each flower.

On some pictures you will recognize the place in the background, just like the poppy picture on the cover. This perpetual calendar is for Giverny lovers and flower lovers alike.

The cost is 19 euros + shipment. If you can wait for 2 weeks, the shipment is 4 euros only. Just drop me a comment and I will be back in touch with the details. 

Enjoy December!

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Giverny has been closed since the 1st of November 2017. Claude Monet’s house and gardens will reopen on the 23rd of March 2018.

The last day, I went photo hunting for the last flowers. That’s a special kind of safari, totally harmless but I found it exciting. These roses are my best prey. Yes, there are still a few roses in Fall at Giverny, as long as it doesn’t freeze. Sometimes they last up to Christmas. 

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This is not black and white, it’s a color pic of Giverny.

In back light the colors disappear on Monet’s pond.

They are turned into shades of grey or sepia.

The picture resembles a vintage photo.

Reducing the colors makes the light look more vibrant. 

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This fat boy is a finch. Finches are the most common birds at Giverny. They are easy to recognize with their pink belly and their grey hood. They sing, they hop around, they don’t seem to care about visitors. They live their own lives.

Like butterflies, birds bring their own magic into the garden of Monet.

Robins are also common and cute with their scarlet belly. When gardeners work, the robin that ‘owns’ the place is never very far away. And gardeners work at Giverny on a daily basis…

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Late summer is a feast for the eyes in Monet’s gardens at Giverny.

Japanese anemones, among many other flowers, are at their best.

Claude Monet grew them along the main alley.

He loved their elegant white flowers popping out against a beautiful green foliage.

On the photos taken in his times, simple white Japanese anemones can be seen.

Nowadays they also exist in pink and can be double or even fluffy.

All of them are lovely perennials that last for decades. 

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Many visitors of Giverny feel inspired by Monet’s flower garden. Here is how to capture its spirit:

• choose a main color to create an almost monochromatic flower bed
• combine as many different flowers in this range of color as possible
• mix up flower sizes and shapes, trying not to have two same flowers side by side
• look for petals having different textures, from velvet to feather
• blur the lines of the borders 

Your border should resemble a living impressionist painting, where petals are used like brushstrokes. Happy gardening!

Flowers used in the bed on the picture: ageratum, petunia, browallia, carnation, verbena, gaura, salvia, nicotiana, agrostemma, cleome, anthemis, canterbury bell, malva, papaver somniferum, ammi visnaga, iris, gladiola… 

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A cash dispenser has been recently installed at Giverny. It is located just after the museum of impressionisms in the direction to the church. On the left side of the picture you can see the school of Giverny in the background.

The banking machine is user friendly. The instructions are available in many different languages. I tested it, it works!

The cashpoint replaces a phone box that is of no use anymore since everybody has a mobile phone. 

Edit 2022: the ATM is now at the bakery, farther away in the direction to the church.

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Monet’s garden at Giverny mid-June. Click to enlarge.

In June, roses blossom in every gardens, and especially in Monet’s flower garden at Giverny. The painter loved to trim them along trellises of all kinds, tripods, arches, or these big mushrooms that are so iconic for Giverny. 

June is also the time for poppies and alliums, the big round shaped garlic flowers. Not to mention the huge pigamon, aka thalictrum aquilegifolia, that looks like mauve powder. The garden is full of pinks, reds and purples.

Summer will turn it yellow. Can you see the big leaves in the foreground of the pic? Sunflowers are growing now, to surprise visitors with their dinner plate golden flowers in a month.  

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Is there fish in Monet’s pond at Giverny? This is a question visitors ask frequently.

The water lily pond houses a few big carps, maybe eight according to the gardeners.

There are also smaller fish like ruds, that have orange fins, and at least a perch and a pike.

All of them are wild fish that can be found in streams nearby.

They contribute to the ecosystem of the pond and are invaluable to keep this little microcosm balanced. 

The Giverny fish are greyish, silvery, but not colorful. No koi carps here, although they would add to the oriental look of the garden. 

As mute as they may be, they are visible enough for the heron that visits the pond at dawn. The water is too deep for him to stand in it, but he stays on the side and keeps a close eye on the fish, hoping one will come near enough to be turned into his breakfast.

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The bamboos reflection on Claude Monet’s water lily pond at Giverny adds a lot of interest to the scene, thanks to their moving lines. Their slow motion is quite hypnotic for the viewer, and their geometric aspect contrasts with the other plants all around. 

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Spring makes us all want to walk in beautiful gardens. At Giverny, azaleas and tulips gradually give way to irises, peonies and wisterias. The first water lilies should open within two weeks, recreating once more Monet’s beautiful setting and endless source of inspiration.  

In the flower garden, visitors meander inside of a living painting where flowers recreate the illusion of brushstrokes. Monet had good reasons to claim that his garden was his most beautiful masterpiece.

Just like you can see the brushwork when you tour an exhibition and have a close look at paintings, at Giverny each single flower is a little universe in itself, offering its beauties to our admiration.

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Today at Giverny, at the entrance to Monet’s house, two forsythias grown in planters glow for the show.

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It is this time of year again. Already! At last! The beginning of spring. The time of primroses. 

They flower in big cushions along the paths, so pretty that they look cultivated. What! Nature offers these lovely bunches of pinks and yellows for free, to please our eyes and feed the bees! A present of springtime, that has so many to give away.

We may cherish the flowers of summer, but the first ones are the dearest. Monet also must have been moved by the beauty of the primroses, because he didn’t want them to be pulled out for the sheer reason that they are wild and common. Instead, he asked his gardeners to plant around them.

This is still done at Giverny. Lovely wild flowers enhance borders of spring bulbs and biennials.   They are one of the tips and tricks used by Monet, an accomplished gardener, to make his garden look more natural.

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What is so different and appealing with Monet’s flower garden is its very natural look. The gardeners apply themselves to avoid that flowers seem regimented.

It is not as simple as it sounds. We as humans have a tendency to organize. Spontaneously, unconsciously, what we do and make turns out to be regular.  

One of the gardeners’ trick for planting bulbs randomly is to throw them on the ground, the bare ground of late Autumn. Where the bulb fell, there it is planted.

This tip works for camassias or tulips. Biennals are planted by color patches that combine different varieties, wallflowers, pansies, violas…  Sizes, shapes and hues of the same color help creating the impressionist brushstrokes feeling.  

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Violas and pansies are among the cutest flowers that accept to bloom during winter time at Giverny.  They belong to the same family, pansies being bigger than violas. But the latter compensate by having loads of adorable little flowers, often marked by black lines that resemble ink drawings. 

Here is viola ‘Tiger Eyes’. With some imagination you may want to compare this black and yellow design with the stripes of a tiger, and the black maculas with his eyes. A very proud name indeed for such a tiny and harmless flower!

Violas and pansies need some warmth to flower. Depending of the winter weather they start early or wait until spring. More trustful are snow drops, that grow in many places in Monet’s garden at Giverny. Their favorite time is February, snow or shine. 

They bloom for the pleasure of the gardeners and of the first butterflies, like this Small Tortoiseshell. No visitors yet: the Monet garden is closed up to March 23, 2017 included. 

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