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 flower garden Monet's garden Monet's House Museum Museum of Impressionisms Giverny Nymphea painting pink Pond Poppy rhododendrum rose Snow spring spring flowers Tulip Vernon Water-Garden Water Lily weeping willow Winter Wisteria Woodblock 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.
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.
Monet’s garden at Giverny is full of roses.
It is not a proper rose garden, for there are also many other sorts of flowers, but nonetheless it is gorgeous in May and June when the roses are in bloom.
They are everywhere, weeping from the umbrella like structures, climbing on trellises, on fences, on trees, on the facade of the house, wrapped around tripods, in bunches, or among peonies and sweet rocket in the mixed borders…
All sorts of colors can be seen, pale cream, pure white, soft yellow, many pinks, red, orange… Not all of them are simple roses but many are scented. Light and delight.
Claude Monet preferred simple roses, with one row of petals instead of more complicated double roses.
Double flowers with many petals seemed too sophisticated for his garden located 80 km from Paris in the small village of Giverny, in the middle of the countryside.
Simple roses look like the wild ones which are currently in bloom in the fields.
In the same range of ideas Monet didn’t consider all the wild flowers like weed. He accepted many of them among the cultivated ones. They give sort of a countryside touch to his flower garden.