I have eventually gathered my favorite pictures of Giverny into a photo gallery.
Season after season, Monet’s water garden and flower garden change a lot.
I like early morning atmospheres as well as rainy days, bright sunshine or sunset. I like the snow white garden. I like roses and nympheas. I like the colors of autumn, the stunning reflections on the pond.
I hope you will like them too.
Giverny Photo Gallery
April 21, 2012
Monet’s Garden in Early April
March 23, 2012
This is what you can expect if you are visiting Giverny in Early April. The white and pink magnolias are in blossom. Very soon, their flowers will fall on the lawns, creating a white circle at the foot of the trees.
The pimples of weeping willows have burst, long branches of fresh green leaves hang over the pond, reflecting in endless verticals.
Patches of yellow or white daffodils illuminate the spring grass and diffuse a fabulous scent.
Monet’s pond, where only a few water lily pads announce the future splendour of Summer, is stiller than ever, and the atmosphere very peaceful.
All the benches and bridges have been repainted a bright green. They look inviting.
And birds sing like mads, offering the perfect voice track for a quiet and serene visit of Giverny.
Boating Gardening
February 23, 2012
This is what is needed at Giverny to keep Monet’s pond as clean as a mirror:
- a flat boat copied from Monet’s, very common in his times,
- a big garbage can,
- a carp net,
- thick gloves to protect your hands.
Equipped with these very simple tools, the gardener is ready for the constant battle he has to fight.
The battle field is the surface, and the invaders are of different kinds. The main body of the army is made out of dried leaves and seeds. Drown bugs must go, too.
Alone against the ennemy that is continuously renewed, the gardener must be a super heroe. He needs a good balance, a strong back and strong arms to fish the dirt and take it out, leaf after leaf. Good spirits are essential too. Patience and perseverance.
No wonder the algaes and leaves fishing gardener is the star of the pond, photographed millions of times by the visitors of Giverny.
A Frog on a Lilly Pad
April 30, 2011
Frogs are very loud these days at Giverny.
The rest of the year, they are rather shy, and you rarely see them. But in Spring, especially in April, they croak.
The big bubbles the toad inflate on their cheeks betray them, although their color matches perfectly the water lilly pad they are seated on.
Their choir is not continuous. It sounds all of a sudden in the silent air. One frog starts, and quickly all the other ones reply, louder and louder. After a minute or two, they stop briskly.
I suppose they believe they sung harmoniously and are waiting for the applause of the visitors walking around Claude Monet’s pond.
Giverny at Twilight
January 14, 2010
It was a dream come true for me to enter Monet’s garden at sunset to take pictures of the dusk.
Cold Winter days finish in a symphony of very tender colors, soft pinks and blues, whereas milder days generally offer dramatic sunsets with flaming reds on low clouds.
As it was last week, it was just incredible to be there, in the absolutely empty garden, walking around the frozen water lily pond waiting for the sky to change.
During the Winter parenthesis, when it is closed for five months, Giverny stops being iconic. Monet’s pool is no more the motiv for world wide known canvases. It becomes a patch of nature again, a very small place indeed lost in the frozen landscape. The realm of wild life.
Natural Paintings
October 30, 2009
Fall is a talented artist who paints beautiful works on Monet’s water lily pond at Giverny.
Late October is the best time to admire the warm reflection of foliage on the surface so often painted by the master of Impressionism.
Liquidambars, weeping willows, poplars, taxodium, beech, chestnut trees all offer their brightest tones duplicated by the mirror of the lake.
Then the breeze comes like a magic stick to blur it all and turn the perfect images into nature’s brushstrokes.
And the little green bridge is there to frame it all.
Autumn Stars
October 25, 2008
The fallen leaves of the three liquidambars look like stars picked on the surface of Monet’s pond at Giverny.
They twinkle against the dark blue reflection of the sky.
In 19th Century France it was a common pattern to paint murals of stars in the night on the ceilings of churches.
Fish Stories
August 30, 2008
Where there is a bubble, there is a fish.
Many fish live in Monet’s lake at Giverny. They help keeping its balance.
There are many rudd, easy to recognize because of their orange fins, and carp.
The carp are not Koi carp, they are wild ones. They come from the Seine river.
A few years ago there was a flood. It was like paradise for carp, they went wandering in an almost endless lake.
Unfortunately for the carp, the water receded, and they were trapped in puddles. They would have died, but the gardeners of Giverny saved them with big garbage cans.
They released them in the pond. Since this day they have been doing well. Now they are big carp and likely to become very old.
And there are also pike in the pond. Several ones, but one is especially big and especially nasty.
Two years ago, a couple of moor hens had made their nest on the island in the middle of the pond. When they had their chicks, seven sweet little chicks, they brought them on the pond to teach them how to swim. Then this greedy pike ate them all one by one.