Flowers that Monet Grew In Giverny

Which Flowers Did Monet Grow?

Many of us are familiar with Claude Monet’s luminous paintings of his garden, but what of the gardener that created the scenes that capture our admiration? How did his garden grow?

In his famous garden at Giverny we might know that Monet grew waterlilies, of which he made a number of famous paintings, but what other flowers did Claude Monet plant in his beloved garden? It turns out that there were tulips, wisteria, dahlias, sunflowers, asters… combined for the love of color and the joy of a sunny day in France.

We might know many of the flowers by simply looking closely at his paintings, but unlike many other landscapes and gardens, Monet’s Giverny is a garden which people can visit even today, one which is recreated to give us a firsthand look at his artistic vision. The story of his garden, and the flowers which inhabit it, unfolds…

Well Known Old Fashioned Flowers

Garden Plants Our Grandmothers Knew

Monet grew many of the flowers familiar to the old fashioned gardens of his time.

• Roses, clematis, poppies, and of course, the walkway rimmed with nasturtiums.
• Great stands of German Bearded Iris, an array of color in late spring.
• Tulips and forget-me-nots, pansies, and wisteria vines and azalea bushes.
• Alliums in number and the sweetly fragrant, blowsy peonies grew there, snapdragons and golden daffodils.
• Annual Nasturtiums line the famous arch covered path which led to the porch of his house.

ANNUALS GROWN IN THIS GARDEN

• Marigold
• Antirrhinum (Snapdragons)
• Sweet Pea
• Ipomoea (Morning Glory)

Monet’s Garden: Through the Seasons at Giverny

Buy an excellent book that takes you through the season in Monet’s garden in Giverny. From the history to practical planting techniques and plans, the story of this place will intrigue and entrance.

Narrated History And May Scenery Introduce Giverny

Take your time meandering through the photographs and the story of one of the most famous gardens of the world. Study the flowers for yourself with this wonderful coffee table book.

What To Plant For Spring

A LIST OF SPRING FLOWERS GROWN IN GIVERNY GARDEN

Tulips, pansies, iris, and doronicum are some of the main plants. Accompanied by Aubrietas, Forget-me-nots, Crocus, and Viola cornuta.

Monet’s paintings show large groups of one color that predominates during its time of bloom. Blue-purple iris has its day in the sunny late spring.

APRIL

Tulips, Pansies, Forget-me-nots, Narcissus, Aubrieta, cherry and crab-apple blossom, Fritillaries.

Narcissus Brings A Golden Light

The spring blooming bulbs in their cheery yellow tints are among the easiest to grow and the most likely to be perennial in flower borders.

Bring several varieties into your flower pictures, they have many sizes and a number of bloom seasons in spring: early, mid, and late.

Golden yellow for spring

50 Large Yellow ‘Tamara’ Daffodil Flower Bulbs

Buy a large amount of bulbs to naturalize, creating a drift of golden yellow. This is the way an artist will plant a cloud of daffodil blooms. They will multiply over time and can be divided.

How To Naturalize Bulbs

Springtime Views at Monet’s Garden

MAY

Peak bloom in the garden at Giverny is May-June

Iris, peony, poppies, geraniums, wisteria, wallflower, rhododendron, golden rain tree bloom, daisies, delphiniums.

Many Blooms For June

In case you decide to fill your own landscape with Impressionist color, or wish to reproduce a similar historical era garden, this list may be very useful for you.

Monet’s French garden is located in a warmer hardiness zone than most American gardens, unless they are located in the South or Coastal regions. Many of the plants he used in his gardens are, however, quite hardy for most gardens.

A place to buy some of these fine plants online is Nature Hills. Or you can try to find them on Amazon (through my affiliate links) or in your local nursery. Keep the list handy on your phone or in your garden journal.

Iris, Climbing Roses, Soft Pink Peonies

Perennial Garden Plants

1. Roses- Todays David Austin roses would be an excellent choice to grow.
2. Clematis- Clematis are widely available and grow vertically on a trellis. Ideal for smaller gardens.
3. Heliopsis- These are large, late season, golden, wild sunflower flowers. Beautiful for a country style garden.
4. Bearded Iris- Old fashioned German iris available in a rainbow of colors. Bloomtime late May.
5. Oenothera- Evening primroses are biennials and are sweetly scented.
6. Campanulas- Many forms of campanula can be planted in the garden, although the midsize bellflowers are the old fashioned garden variety.Blue ‘Faerie Queen’ Bellflower
7. Globe thistle- Globe Thistle Perennial 3 Plants – Echinops Ritro
8. Blue Hydrangeas- the macrophyllas are usually less hardy, but there are some modern ones like ‘Endless Summer’ which fare better in northern gardens.
9. Carnations- the type will depend on your hardiness climate. Diainthus of the smaller types are often very hardy, while the larger florist types are much less hardy.

Blooming by Season

If you choose to add Monet’s favorite or design a cottage garden like his, follow the practical instructions on the plantings.

Late Spring and Early Summer Flowers

What To Grow In Summer for Monet’s Cottage Design

A LIST OF SUMMER FLOWERS GROWN IN GIVERNY GARDEN

In the paintings and photographs phlox and asters are noticeable. Roses open mainly in the month of June, along with the end of the peonies. Lilies begin in June and certain varieties go throughout August. It must have been a deliriously fragrant place at this time of year.

JULY AND AUGUST

Anemone, Asters, Bellflowers, Cannas, Dahlias, Heliopsis, Lilies, Oenathera, Rudbeckia, Salvias, Sunflowers, Solidago, Verbascum

Brief Profiles Of Main Summer Blooms

Summer Asters and Heliopsis

Asters and Heliopsis, Dahlias and Black-eyed Susans are a combination to try for late bloom.

How To Grow Asters

Asters grow in part to full sun exposure. They take average soil and moisture conditions. There are a number of types of asters, both perennial and annual.

How To Grow Dahlias

Dahlias are tender bulbs with rainbow of colors. They have a variety of size and shapes to the blooms and plants. Monet’s garden had the larger blooms in sunset colors and some of the more tender pinks, but was not limited to those.

Find a big impact Dahlia bloom that you can build your own palette of color around, in containers and in the garden. This is a way to get a professional color combination that gives a great show.

Lift the tender bulbs in fall and store over winter.

How To Grow Sunflowers

Full Sun, average moisture to dry, sunflowers are easily grown from seed, and will reseed if you give them a chance. They are tall and stately, needing no staking even in windy situations.

How To Grow Nasturtiums

Cheerful bright, edible flowers with round bright green leaves describe Nasturtiums. Annual flowers that fill your summer garden with beautiful colors ranging from the more common oranges and yellows to selected colors such as mahogany and apricots.So easy to grow from seed!

Tall Single Blend Nasturtium Seeds – 3g So easy a child can grow them. Beautiful for edgings, vegetable and cutting gardens. Annuals grown from seed. Don’t overfertilize, or you will have far more leaves than flowers. These flowers, stems, and leaves add a peppery taste to salads, Yes, they are edible. Aphid magnets.

How To Grow Heliopsis

Bold golden sunflowers, and some of their variants in harvest colors make Monet’s garden sparkle. They give height and birds love to feed on the seeds. Need full sun.

Heliopsis is a golden daisy flower, native to American prairies. They need full sun. While growing easily, the plants are a bit tall and ungainly on their own. Combine them with tall asters (Michaelmas daisies) to bolster them and lend some interest between their lofty heads and the ground.

How To Grow Oenothera

“Evening Primrose” with a soft lemon yellow flower. Full sun. Easy from seed, it is a biennial.

Monet’s Family Home, Some History

This house is where Claude Monet, his second wife Alice, and their eight children made their home, and for 40 years created domestic and artistic bliss.

By 1899, a greenhouse and another studio were added.

The garden closest to the house is a traditional Normandy ‘clos’, a walled garden for vegetables and fruit which we know as a “kitchen garden”. This is a very old form of garden, which Monet imprinted with his own sensibilities, adding the arches and many colorful annual flowers.

The well known water garden is located across the road, now reached by a tunnel for the ease of the many visitors from around the world. In that garden is the water lily pond and Japanese bridge. Wisteria, water lilies, weeping willow, and bamboos combine to create the little piece of paradise that Monet’s paintings captured in so many ways from far and near views.

Claude Monet died in 1926, and his house and gardens passed on to the French Academy of Fine Arts. After which the garden declined until new interest resulted in a restoration of the garden which began in the late 1970s.

About the Giverny Garden

Giverny is essentially a country garden, with loosely planted menage of many old fashioned flowers favored in the nineteenth century.

Created In Cottage Style

The Giverny garden grew directly from the fertile imagination of a great artist, Claude Monet. It is a good example of cottage style with closely planted od fashioned flowers spilling over each other.

While it uses many of the common flowers of the day, the rendering and the palette was groundbreaking for his time, like his art. Indeed, he had some convincing to do in his community to make peace with his neighbors over the way he designed and planted this property.

Keep in Mind: a Cottage Garden is Work

Like many large gardens of the time, full time employed gardeners did the work and maintained the look of these gardens. For example, one gardener had the task of cleaning soot off the waterlily leaves, one of the instructions Monet wrote to his gardening staff daily.

A Bit of the Garden’s History

Located in France, 50 miles from Paris in Normandy, Claude Monet first saw Giverny from a train window and in 1883 he rented a house there. It became the home that he bought, with its barn turned studio, and eventually the original two acres expanded to five acres planted with the now famous gardens.

The original place had taken on a transformation. At first, a farmhouse surrounded by an orchard, Monet tore out all but a few of the original fruit trees. The formal aspect of the allée leading to the house was retained, but after winning out in the argument with his wife, Monet removed the spruce trees and replaced them with the now widely recognized metal arches, covered in roses and clematis.

Monet’s Renowned Lily Pond

Source: Catriona Savage

Daffodils By The Famous Bridge

Monet sprinkled daffodils throughout his design. He loved sunny yellow paired with blue, a color combination that filled his kitchen. Daffodils make it a simple matter to sprinkle that same sunny color within your own garden.

The bulbs come up year by year, asking only for a sunny spot. Use the same blue green color for containers or nearby garden seats.

Get Inspired To Plant Your Own Backyard

Monet’s Passion: Ideas, Inspiration, and Insights from the Painter’s Gardens
Monet’s Passion: Ideas, Inspiration, and Insights from the Painter’s Gardens

Consider this for your garden bookshelf if you are thinking of adding Monet’s signature look to your own cottage style garden. Pull ideas from his artistic genius and paint your own yard with brilliant landscaping insights.

Gallery: The Garden Depicted Through Time

An interesting thing about the paintings of his garden are how they change over time. It is still recognizably the same place, but the seasonal displays and then the actual color perception becomes quite different as he catches the plein air look with his oils and brushes.

One of Monet’s paintings records his impression of a certain time and atmosphere in his garden. A photo of another time, in both era and season. As his eyesight worsened the colors he saw, and painted, changed in tone.

Phlox, peonies, roses, and iris of a June bloom may be noted in many of the the photographs and videos. Nasturtiums, asters, sunflowers and in others.

The Brush of the Artist

Compare the Eye of the Camera with Monet’s

Giverny in August

Monet’s pathway shows dapple shaded gravel is rimmed on wither side with low growing mounds of flowers. The nasturtiums are just showing color and perhaps have asters behind them.

Summertime View Of The Garden

Painted Tones Changed With His Eyesight

‘Water Lilies’, 1919 Oil on canvas must have been fall, or at least late summer.

Purple Asters Are A Border Mainstay

Michaelmas Daisies, New England asters

AKA “Michaelmas Daisies”

A native perennial plant to the US Midwest which will provide blue blooms in late summer. Very easy to grow from seed, these will lend some of Monet’s favorite colors to a late season border.

Color Lessons In House And Garden

There are plenty of art lessons to be had in Monet’s garden at Giverny. As some of the photos here illustrate, some of the plans unite complementary colors, those which are opposite on the color wheel, like blue and orange, while others are harmonies.

Primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, secondary colors green and orange are used in the entry path of the garden.

The famous waterlily pond has the color combination used at the house: pink and green with the all important blue green accents ) although the paint was originally a bright green which fades to blue green with age).

Giverny in August

Monet’s pathway

• Giverny : Claude Monet’s garden – flower list
  Official list of flowers grown in Monet’s famous garden.

The Garden at Giverny – The colors and harmonies that Monet loved

Borrow Plans for Your Own Landscape

Monet’s Planting Schemes

Learn from the master, recipes of flower plants to repeat beautiful harmonies of flowers in your own garden.

In 1893, the artist managed to buy the meadow located across the road from his home. In this meadow he dug a pond and built his Oriental garden with its brightly painted Japanese bridge.

“… Monet made a temporary model from bamboo canes and wire experimenting with the different effects.” in order to decide where to position his Japanese bridge.

These are a few of the insights into creating an artist’s garden that is admired the world over.

Color Harmonies like Monet’s

Planting Schemes from Monet’s Garden (Garden Inspirations)

Any admirer of cottage gardens and impressionistic colorplay will enjoy having this book on their bookshelf. It will provide hours of fascination as the planting schemes can be duplicated or built upon in one’s own garden.

Monet – Magnificent Impressionist Painter

MORE FACTS ABOUT THE MAN, Short Timeline

Monet was born November 14th, 1840 in Paris.

Entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts in 1851

Monet and Camille Doncieux married in 1870, she died in 1879.

Alice Hoschedé helped raise his children and eventually married Claude Monet in 1892.

Monet died of lung cancer on 5 December 1926 at the age of 86.

Cafe Les Nymphias…