Entries Categorized as 'Monet’s flower garden'

Opening Day at Giverny

April 2, 2023

Monet’s gardens at Giverny, 2023, 1st April / Photo Ariane Cauderlier

Visitors are back in Monet’s gardens in Giverny, enjoying the first flowers of the season: daffodils, tulips, pansies, hyacinths, fritillaries… Trees blossom in pink and white. The first water lily pads are appearing on the pool.

Exhibition ‘The Children of Impressionism’ in Giverny, spring 2023

In the nearby Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny (MDIG) the current exhibition is called ‘The Children of Impressionism’. It is packed with works by Renoir, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Boudin… full of fatherly or motherly tenderness. The exhibition will last up to July 2, 2023. Enjoy!

Giverny Off Season

November 9, 2022

Photo Ariane Cauderlier

Monet’s gardens at Giverny are now closed until 1st April 2023, but the gardeners are still very busy preparing the flower show of next year. The Grande Allee has already lost its carpet of nasturtiums, its beds of dahlias, asters and sages. It will soon be replanted with spring bulbs, pansies and wallflowers.

Don’t miss the little rose garden

May 25, 2022

Photo Ariane Cauderlier, 13th May 2022, Monet’s Garden in Giverny

On the left side of the house, the garden of Claude Monet ends in a cul-de-sac. Protected by a high wall, pink roses thrive there. If you visit Giverny, don’t miss this corner of the flower garden, it is the perfect time of year to see – and smell! – roses.

Giverny, a Garden of Colors

April 28, 2022

Photo Ariane Cauderlier, Monet’s Garden in Giverny, 27th April 2022

April is a very colorful month at Giverny, thank to thousands and thousands of tulips, underplanted with pansies, wallflowers and forget-me-not.
Monet combined short flower beds and very long ones, inspired by the colorful stripes of the tulipfields that he had seen in Holland.

Fall Colors

October 26, 2020

While trees are changing colors from green to shades of brown and yellow, flowers offer in October fire works of bright and beautiful tones. In Monet’s gardens at Giverny, asters of all kinds steal the show, enhanced by tall yellow helianthus and amazing dahlias. Sages are at their best.

Anyway, after closing day, in November, the gardeners won’t spare any of these beauties. They will rush to clean up the flower beds and plant spring bulbs before it gets cold.

Painting by Petals

September 29, 2019

In the impressionist garden of Claude Monet at Giverny, each petal is like some paint on the canvas.

The blue tibouchina is at its best in September. It is grown in a planter as it must be kept in the greenhouse over the winter.

Flowers Mean Colors

June 27, 2019

Monet’s flower garden in June

Monet’s garden is a painter’s garden. What matters are colors and light, the subtle and ever changing combination of colors in the light. In this upper corner of the flower garden at Giverny, the gardeners associate poppies of rich or soft pink with a blue clematis and purple roses. The little blue dots are corn flowers.

Under the Lime Trees

June 19, 2019

Monet’s second studio in the flower garden at Giverny

At the top of his flower garden, in the upper left corner, Monet built a studio in 1899. Aged 58, he was now famous, recognized as a master, and rich enough to turn his building dreams into reality.

A double row of lime-trees (tilia) linked this studio with the garden. Monet and his family loved to stay in their shade on warm summer days for a lunch in the open air.

In their times, the ground was sanded. Nowadays, a tempting lawn covers this cool area, but just for the pleasure of the eyes: it is not allowed to step, not to speak about lying on it.

In the background, against the studio wall, Monet installed an aviary where the children kept wounded birds that they tried to rescue.

The Short Season of Peonies

May 1, 2019

Vibrant colors are softened by bright greens in front of Monet’s house at Giverny

Peonies belonged to Monet’s most cherished flowers. Rare species were sent to him from Asia, needless to say that the painter was thrilled and took great care of them.

Their beautiful colors and fragile looking petals have still many admirers. The giant size of the flowers, their light scent and ornamental foliage make them must have in a garden.

At Giverny, they are combined with annuals and spring bulbs. The gardeners experiment new harmonies every year, which is a good tip to avoid monotony in your on garden. If by any chance you are not enthusiastic about the result, it doesn’t matter much because bulbs can be changed next year. And peonies flower for such a short time that the not-so-well-matching effect will not last.

Asters and More

November 27, 2018

Asters

In Claude Monet’s garden, it is all about colors. Petals are used like paint, like brushstrokes, to give the illusion of an impressionist painting in which we can walk.

In October and November, asters are at their best at Giverny, creating masses of little starry flowers. They mate with many other late bloomers such as sages, love lies bleeding, garden chrysanthemums or dahlias of all kind, showing that autumn too is a great season for flowers. 

Do Foxes Wear Gloves?

May 16, 2018

foxgloves

Monet’ house at Giverny, mid-May. Click to enlarge. 

Some flower names sound really strange, like foxgloves. These tall and beautiful flowers (also called digitalis) photographed here at the top of the main alley in Claude Monet’s flower garden like the shade of the two old yews. Under the dark branches, they feel at home, as if they had just escaped from a wood. They thrive in the forests of Normandy, wherever the soil is acidic enough. 

With their spiky shape they resemble fairy hats, what leads us to the origin of their common name. According to a friend of mine, foxgloves derive from folks gloves, these folks being the fairies, of course. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like this explanation…

The Tulips of Giverny

April 23, 2018

tulips-monet-house

The name of Monet and his garden at Giverny evoke specific flowers: water lilies, wisterias, irises in large rows… It rarely brings up images of tulips. The big tulip show of April is a surprise to many visitors. 

Tulips in Monet’s times were not yet what they are now, but Monet planted them and painted them, especially on the dining-room doors of his art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. They are so colorful and charming that a painter can only fall under their spell. 

10 000 bulbs are planted yearly in Monet’s gardens at Giverny. During the first weeks after the opening, they pop out of the ground, form their thick buds and open all of a sudden at the first ray of sunshine. It is like a canvas suddenly covered by paint, each of them being a brushstroke. It may be the time of year when the feeling of walking in a painting is at its strongest in the flower garden designed by Claude Monet. 

Giverny’s Fragrance

April 7, 2018

giverny-april2018

The blooming of hyacinths is the sign that Spring has arrived at last. In Monet’s garden they are planted by hundreds. They are beautiful for their colors ranging from white to pale yellow, pink, purple, blue and even almost black, but to tell the truth it is their scent that makes them irresistible.

If we humans would wear that much perfume, it would be a nuisance for people next to us. However, for flowers, rules are different. The more fragrance the better.

We love walking or sitting in an air that is full of their delicious smell. Spontaneously we close the eyes to concentrate better on this experience. Colors forgotten, it is a treat to be nostrils only, taking in the best of springtime.

Yews

March 6, 2018

yews

Seen from Monet’s bedroom, these two imposing trees are yews. They were not planted by Claude Monet: they are older. He found them when he arrived at Giverny. They appear on old photos, although we don’t know of any pic that is from the eighteen eighties. The garden became the focus of photographers after its transformation by Monet and most photos are from the twentieth century. 

 Yews are extraordinary trees. They can live up to 1500 years. In our region of Normandy they are planted near churches in cemeteries. They were certainly symbolic and magic as well. Chapels dedicated to the Virgin were installed in some very old specimens.  

Monet’s two yews in comparison are young boys, only two hundred years old. But they’ve witness so many events, so many people paying a visit to Monet and later touring his garden that their memories would be amazing, if they were willing to share…

Japanese Anemone

September 2, 2017

japanese-anemones

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.