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Grow a Monet inspired garden to create an impression!
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Monet & The Impressionists at Art Gallery, NSW Impressionism was a revolution in modern painting, capturing the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere to create works of incredible beauty and immediacy. This major exhibition gives a unique insight to the world of the Impressionists and the emergence of its most celebrated artist, Claude Monet (14th November 1840 – 5th December 1926).
He also stated, “I am busy gardening, it will give me flowers to paint on rainy days. There was a stream, the Epte, which came down from Gisors on the boundary of my property. I opened up a ditch so that I could fill the little pond that I had dug in my garden. I love water but I also love flowers. That's why, when the pond was filled, I wished to decorate it with plants. I took a catalogue and made a choice any old how. That's all." Monet had a Japanese foot-bridge over the water-lily pond. He once said, “Suddenly I had the revelation of how magical my pond is. I took up my palette. Since that time I have scarcely had any other model." ~~~~~~~~~~~~ You too can create the atmosphere that Monet captured in his many paintings. Some plants are featured below: |
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Water Lilies (Nympheas) 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 colourful nympheas, these flowers were very modern. |
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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. During Monet’s time there was a boat anchored at the dock. It was used mainly by the gardener devoted to the water garden. This gardener had a special job: every morning he had to wash the water lilies. The road nearby made them dusty, Monet who wanted to paint them, wanted them to be clean. The gardener used to get up very early in the morning, before the master would come, and tour the pond in the boat to push the flowers under the surface with the row to clean them. |
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Weeping Willows Monet was keen on painting through the weeping willow. It was difficult, and he liked the challenge. There was the vertical axis of the branches and the horizontal axis of the floating water lilies. In addition, the reflection of the sky looks like a hole in the water. Monet could even see the stems of the flowers under the surface. When he painted here, he had to mix all the different plans to put them on the two dimensional canvas. |
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Wisteria The wisteria is at its peak over the Japanese Bridge in Claude Monet’s garden. Its flowers look like long grapes. They are a soft tone of lavender and produce a delicious scent which recalls to the scent of jasmine. It is an incredible feeling to stand on the bridge and be surrounded by the blooming wisteria all around you. |
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Roses In his water garden at Giverny, Claude Monet had a dock adorned by arches of climbing roses. It is especially beautiful in late June when the roses are in blossom, adding their pink to the greens of the foliages. Monet’s garden at Giverny is full of roses. 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 colours can be seen, pale cream, pure white, soft yellow, many pinks, red, orange… |
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Claude Monet preferred simple roses, with one row of petals instead of more complicated double roses. 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. |
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Geraniums (Pelargoniums) Geraniums are named after cranes, a bird which is the symbol of a long and happy life in Japan. Monet planted geraniums in his garden to add splashes of colour as well as continue the Japanese theme. Monet often painted Geraniums in the background of his paintings. |
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Japanese influence
Claude Monet was influenced by his extensive collection of Japanese woodblocks when he created his water garden. He liked all the bamboos, wisterias, water lilies or peonies he could see on them and wanted these exotic plants in his garden. He also loved the curved bridges which are so common on Japanese prints. He didn’t intend to create a true Japanese garden in the spirit being very different. His bridges are much less bent than authentic ones, and they are green. In a true Japanese garden, they should be red. This part of Monet’s water garden at Giverny ‘looks like Japan’, as the painter would have said. He planted many exotic species of plants he could see on the prints, like azaleas, rhododendrons, wisterias, bamboos, Japanese maples and of course water lilies. Monet imported peonies in trees from Japan. Many plants in his garden had never been seen before in Giverny. |
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Monet’s home in Giverny, France features a pond full of water-lilies, surrounded by trees and flowers. Monet said that “Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” 
