Part II : Monet’s garden
FONDATION CLAUDE MONET (THE CLAUDE MONET FOUNDATION)
http://fondation-monet.com/en/Giverny is located 80km (50 miles) north of Paris. You can reach it easily by car or public transport. There is a small parking lot in front of his house. Fondation Claude Monet was created in 1980 and in the same year his house and gardens became a museum open to the public.
As you can see from the map below, there are two parts to his garden. The first part located directly behind the house, Clos-Normand, is where there are rows and rows of colourful flowers, and the back part (which is accessed via an underground pedestrian tunnel) is the part most people want to see, as it’s the part filled with the little Japanese-style bridges, willow trees, ponds and waterlilies which were the inspiration for so many of his paintings.
(map from giverny.fr)
In preparation for this big photographic trip I read as much as I could online to find out about the conditions for photographing the various locations and it seemed that Claude Monet’s house and garden (Fondation Claude Monet) gets super crowded super quickly. The interior of the house and the ‘alleyways’ or paths in the garden are not that wide so…
I was fortunate enough to get access to the gardens before they officially opened to the public but I only had about 30 minutes before all the tour groups started arriving. I ran around like crazy trying to get as many photos as I could during this time and by 10am the place was so crowded it was hard to go anywhere without bumping into hoards of people so we were lucky to have arrived so early.
It was marvellous waking up to the sun and watching it rise over his gardens…
I’d read a few reviews of this place too and looked at photos on Flickr and Instagram and various websites… everyone oohed and aaahed about how beautiful the garden was and indeed they were right! It is really a wonderland, an oasis, a picture of tranquility and beauty… I can’t even begin to describe the awe I experienced so why don’t I just show you some photos? By the way, Monet was quite interested in Japanese culture, hence the oriental style little bridges in his garden and his collection of Japanese prints on some walls inside his house.
The flowers and plants change according to the seasons so if you go twice you’re bound to see different flowers and different colours. I was really surprised by how green everything was. Even for autumn the garden was very much thriving. I’m no gardener or botanist but I wanted to find out what the different species of flowers were called, in both French and English! I was particularly amused by what I call the “Sideshow Bob” (Tahiti Bob en français) hairdo flowers just in front of his house.
Part III: Fondation Claude Monet
