We spent five incredible days in Giverny, France, the home of Monet’s Garden. Giverny is a small village located 80 km. west of Paris. It has a few bed & breakfasts, galleries and restaurants. There are, however, no drug stores, grocery stores or commercial enterprises. Tha main attraction to this quaint village is Claude Monet’s home and garden and museums dedicated to Monet and Impressionism.

Our photography group, led by Charles Needle, was fortunate to have access to the gardens in the early morning hours and again in the late afternoon and evening hours when the grounds were closed to tourists. It was a magical experience!

Monet and his family settled in Giverny in 1883. Monet’s gardens encompass two main areas: the flower garden adjacent to the house, known as Clos Normand, and the Japanese inspired water gardens. Monet engineered the water garden ponds by diverting the Epte, a tributary of the Seine River. Through his efforts, he created a beautiful outdoor artist’s studio. Monet was so proud of his water garden that he liked to receive his guests there.(I am proud of our own little water garden-but that is a story for another blog post!) Monet was always fascinated with and inspired by the play of light, mist, and reflections of the clouds and landscape on water.

Claude Monet wrote,”I grew them(water lilies) without thinking of painting them. You cannot become immersed in a landscape in a single day…And then all of a sudden, I had the revelation of the enchantments of my pond…I took my palette. Since then, I have had almost no other model.”

The water gardens were on the other side of the road which we reached through an underground tunnel. We knew in advance that it would be too early for the water lillies to be in bloom. However, we were disappointed that the wisteria over the bridge, so prominent in Monet’s paintings, was not yet in bloom.Yet, during our week in Giverny, Dick and I were both drawn to the water gardens and the allure of the Japanese bridges. It was our favorite place and I think we did our best work there.

I will focus on Monet’s house and the Clos Normand Garden in a future post.