19th century Alice Alley Azaleas Bamboo climbing roses door entrance Exhibition Flower flowers Garden Giverny Giverny Garden home house Impressionism Japanese Japanese bridge Mill Monet Monet's garden Monet's House Museum Museum of Impressionisms Giverny Nymphea painting pink Pond Poppy rhododendrum rose Snow spring Tulip Vernon Water-Garden Water Lily water lily pond weeping willow Winter Wisteria Woodblock yellow flower yew trees
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A purple bush rose frames the big window of Monet’s first studio at Giverny.
Purple roses are not very common, nor look very natural, but they provide a strong impact. This one has a sweet name: lavender dream. It is lovely in springtime when it flowers in numerous small simple roses.
It is too late now for roses, but it is the right time to see -and smell- lavender in bloom at Giverny, as a slight reminiscence to Provence. It perfumes the air, together with phlox and lilies.
Dancing in the air.
Flying.
Landing on petals.
Smelling the heavy scents of flowers.
Rolling in stamens.
Living on nectar.
Buzzing.
To be or not to be a bee.
What would be Spring without tulips? They illuminate April in Monet’s garden at Giverny.
According to the head gardener, the list of the varieties displayed in the garden is very long: several hundreds of types of tulips make the Clos Normand sort of a flower show.
It is unbelievable how different the tulips can be. Their colors range from pure white to almost black red, from light pink to deep purple, from pale yellow to bright orange. They can be ridiculously tiny, or incredibly tall. Some are classically round shaped, other ones look like stars, or are as twisted as a flame. The parrot tulips seem tightly shut jaws.
But all of them have this silky quality of petals that reminds of the shine of skin, enhanced by dew in the morning sunshine.
Aren’t you tired of winter? We all look forward to spring. In Monet’s garden sprouts of flowers are coming out, while the gardeners are busy planting the pansies.
This is the way they will look in early April. Hyacinths will be already in full bloom and full scent, their delicate perfume recognizable steps away. At Giverny they greet the visitors right at the entrance to the garden.
Their pink combines perfectly with the mauve pansies flowering at the same time. All together they make a bunch of spring.
Now that all the wild roses are spent, their lovely berries shine in the morning mist.
The dog roses grow everywhere in the area of Giverny, on road sides, on the bushy hills, turning the countryside into a giant garden when they are in bloom in springtime.
At Monet’s time, only white water lilies grew wild in France.
They were hardy flowers, able to stand cold and frost, whereas pink or yellow water lilies were of exotic origin and needed a warm greenhouse to spend the winter.
When Monet created his water garden at Giverny and imagined a pond with floating islands of colorful nympheas, these flowers where very modern.
By the end of the nineteen century a man called Bory Latour-Marliac had the idea of cross fertilizing hardy white water lilies with exotic ones. He was successful and obtained a full palette of hardy waterlilies. In 1889, the year of the Eiffel tower, Latour-Marliac exhibited his new creations at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, where Monet saw them. Four years before he had his pond dug he conceived the idea of it by seeing the beautiful water flowers.
Would Latour-Marliac not have created his flowers, Monet would probably not have painted his Nympheas masterpieces.
Sometimes when I watch flowers in Claude Monet’s gardens at Giverny, I wonder what it can be like to be an ant.
It must be incredible to be able to walk in or on a flower, among these petals that look like candy.
Does an ant feel vertigo?
At the same time distances are so, so long when you are so tiny. And so many decisions have to be made all the time. Will this ant go on this way or go back to find another path?
Claude Monet liked poppies, red poppies in the fields and pink poppies in his garden at Giverny.
His painting of his wife and son walking in a meadow full of poppies is one of the most famous of musée d’Orsay in Paris.
All the poppies are currently in bloom in his flower garden at Giverny, tiny or enormous, scarlet or pink, orange, yellow, some one color, some two. The pink and purple poppies are spectacular.
Monet preferred one color flowers but he also used two color flowers just as he could take two colors with his brush on his palette and put them in one gesture on the canvas.
Just in time for May 1st, the lily of the valley is blooming in Monet’s water garden at Giverny. It is a shy flower that likes to hide but its scent betrays it.
In France the tradition is to give a sprig of lily of the valley on May 1st to the ones you love to bring them luck.
Here is my sprig for you, be lucky all year round!