The sunshine creates rays of light through the mist produced by the watering device in Monet’s garden.
In the summertime most flowers need a lot of water to remain beautiful.
In Monet’s gardens at Giverny the sprinklers are on duty early in the morning and in the evening, to save water and to avoid that visitors get wet, of course.
In Monet’s garden at Giverny, yellow and red flowers unite their flame-like radiant colors.
This effect is obtained by mixing yellow flowers, especially liliums and spotted-loosestrifes with delicate red crocosmias.
Croscosmias leaves have also translucent qualities enhanced by the morning sunshine.
The island bed located just under Monet’s windows at Giverny has a special meaning.
It doesn’t obey the rules Monet applied elsewhere in the garden to compose the flower beds. In fact, Monet didn’t create this one. It is a copy of an island bed he had seen and liked at his aunt Jeanne Lecadre.
Claude Monet painted the garden of his aunt several times when he was 26. On the canvases the same roses in trees and pink geraniums surrounded by dianthus can be seen, but they were painted at his aunt in Sainte Adresse, not in Giverny.
Monet copied this island bed to remember his youth and his aunt. She meant a lot to him, she encouraged him to become a painter.
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.
Monet’s flower garden is divided by a broad alley.
He designed the whole garden except this walk which existed when he settled into the house.
When they came to Giverny this alley was lined by spruce trees. It was dark and full of shade, what pleased Alice: she could walk out in the garden without a parasol. But Monet disliked the spruce trees because flowers would not grow in their shade.
The couple had many arguements about these trees, and it is obvious who won.
Did Alice give up, as a smart lady? Monet kept the two yew trees at the top of the way, and he cut the other ones at a four meter height. The trunks looked like columns. Monet grew climbing roses on them and between each pair of columns he had arches also with climbing roses.
The result was lovely in spring. Now, only the arches and the yew trees remain.