Photoessay: Le Clos Normand.

Claude Monet’s second garden, Le Clos Normand, is the flower garden (see my post on the first garden, the water garden, here). From the one hector of land, Monet made a garden full of perspectives, symmetries and colours. The central alley is covered over by iron arches on which climbing roses grow. Other rose trees cover the balustrade along the house. Claude Monet did not like organized nor constrained gardens. He married flowers according to their colours and left them to grow rather freely – you can definitely see this when you walk down the balustrades in the garden. It is truly an incredible place, so peaceful, so beautiful.

It’s maybe because of flowers that I’ve become a painter.  - Claude Monet

For more information about the garden, visit the Fondation Claude Monet website.

le jardin d’eau (giverny)

With a passion for gardening as well as an interest in colors, Claude Monet, founder of Impressionism, constructed both his water garden and flower garden (see post here) as true works of art. Walking through his gardens, over Japanese bridges and through rows of flowers, you can marvel at the floral compositions and at the infamous nymphéas, his greatest sources of inspiration. A cycle of Monet’s water-lily paintings, known as the Nympheas, was arranged on the ground floor of the Musee d’Orangerie in 1927 – these enormous paintings can be still seen today (see previous post here).

It took me some time to understand my nymphéas…..I grew them 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 theenchantments of my pond….I took my palette. Since then, I have had almost no other model. - Claude Monet

Visit the Fondation Claude Monet in Giverny at 84, rue Claude Monet, 27620 Giverny, France. The foundation is open everyday from the April 1st to November 1st from 9.30 to 18.30. For more information, visit the website. For more information about the village of Giverny, visit the tourist website.

PS. I love Nichole Robertson’s post of Giverny, see it here on her blog, littlebrownpen!