Book Review: Painting with Flowers
Monet at Giverny, by Caroline Holmes; Cassel and Co., 2001.
Monet’s Passion: Ideas, Inspiration, and Insights from the Painter’s Gardens,by Elizabeth Murray; Pomegranate Communications, 2010.
Some of you know that Judy and I were lucky enough to visit Monet’s garden at Giverny in April of this year. Despite the clouds and chill, we were completely bewitched by the garden. When we visited, it was overflowing with tulip, crabapple, and other spring blooms.
Since then, I’ve been reading up on Claude Monet and his garden at Giverny. For those most interested in replicating aspects of Giverny in their own gardens, I highly recommend Monet’s Passion. The author, Elizabeth Murray, helped to restore Giverny in the 1980s after it suffered through a long period of neglect.
Murray provides an enticing description of Monet’s garden through the seasons. She discusses both the upper garden, with its rectangular “paintbox” beds, and the Japanese-influenced lower garden with its mirroring pond, bridges, and water lilies. In the book and in person, I was most enchanted by the upper garden, with its dramatic grand allee, as well as the contrast of geometrically shaped beds filled with exuberantly undisciplined masses of bloom.
For gardeners who seek to emulate Monet, Murray provides a wealth of resources. In addition to the gardens, information is provided on the plants growing on the house and balcony. Murray discusses Monet’s favorite plants, including irises, sunflowers, and wildflowers such as the red poppies native to the area. She reviews his color schemes, such as combining blue with yellow, and his preferred plant combinations. All this is described with the aid of drawings complete with overlays.
For those more interested in Monet the man and his art, then Monet at Giverny is the better choice. Monet had a complicated but mostly happy personal life. He was essentially penniless when he moved to Giverny in 1883. In addition, he was supporting not only his own family, but the wife and children of his former patron, who had fled the country to escape bankruptcy.
- Reflections in the pond of the lower garden.
Eventually, Monet became a wealthy man. He was a very social type and enjoyed friends and family. He eventually married Alice, the patron’s wife, after his own first wife died.
Holmes’ book is beautifully illustrated to demonstrate how Monet’s garden and his paintings shaped each other. She shows how Monet sought to paint not just objects, but the atmosphere and light around objects, and how this made both his gardens and his paintings uniquely dynamic and alive.
Thanks to Roses and Other Gardening Joys for hosting these monthly book reviews.
gardeninacity 
Excellent reviews of both books! I read Monet’s Passion last fall after we had returned from a summer visit to Giverny, and I loved Elizabeth Murray’s writings and photos. I have just reviewed another of her books, Cultivating Sacred Space!
Glad you liked them. I’ll definitely take a look at your review.
How wonderful to be able to see Monet’s garden in person! I love seeing photos from his garden, but I always wonder if in person it is just as gorgeous. Obviously, it is! I have a couple of books on Monet, but neither of these. I am going to have to add to my collection! I am especially interested in Monet’s Passion. I am impressed that the author helped restore Giverny, and I think having the resources you mention would be very valuable. Thanks so much for joining in!
Seeing Giverny was a highlight of what was the trip of a lifetime for both of us. We’re dying to go back. While there we talked to one of the gardeners who said you can contact them in advance and arrange to volunteer in the garden.
I have added Monet’s Passion to my wish list! Thanks!! I have another book about his painting & gardening, but this one sounds great from a gardeners perspective.
How fun to have been there this spring! I love Monet’s planting designs and really think about implementing them here in my little town garden with bands of color that lead your eye.
It made me wish I had the space to plant a whole additional garden inspired by his. Practically, I think I was inspired to use more annuals mixed with my perennials and to make sure no bare ground is showing.
Sounds like the trip of a lifetime! I enjoyed your book reviews, and I’m sure I would enjoy both of these books. I’ve always been fascinated by Monet, as well. No one portrayed reflections on water or water lilies better than he did. Thanks for the recommendations.
I am dying to go back, maybe in early fall or late summer next year, if we can manage it. I think we would stay near Giverny for a few days so I could do some volunteer gardening there.
The Monet style seems unusually good at combining colour with shape and texture effectively. Colour, in my eyes, so often negates the others.
I’m just reading the Piet Oudolf book that focuses on that very point.
Monet’s gardens are on my travel wish list too, but I’ll settle for the Elizabeth Murray book in the meantime. Of course, the climate here in North Carolina means I will never even come close to this, even if I had the talent, the land, and the money! There is nothing more beautiful than spring in a northern climate. For those of you who have to suffer through cold winters, this is your reward!
I do tire of winter, but springtime is glorious. Sometimes it seems as I get older the winters get harder to endure.
I really envy you seeing the gardens in person. It has been a dream of mine, one I will unlikely get to experience.
Hope you do get the chance, you never know.
Gorgeous photos of Monet’s garden! Most especially I love the last one! I am a very long way from Giverny, but I would love to visit one day. i do have the book Monet’s Passion, which has made me even more eager to see his garden in person.
So glad you like the photos, Judy is very gratified.
How wonderful that you were able to make the journey over to Giverny and that it lived up to expectations. It is a wonderful garden and on my ‘to do ‘list, one day I will get there, it’s much nearer for me in the UK! Some days are kept for artists to come and paint in the garden, now that would be absolutely amazing for me!!
If I lived in the UK I would be in France every other month. Though there is a lot I would love to see in the UK as well, starting with Sissinghurst.
How fortunate you are to have seen these gardens. The book sounds wonderful and dI will look for it. Also I thank you for the book review link.
We count ourselves very lucky to have been able to make this trip.
The book sounds like a great way to enjoy the beautiful garden of this important painter…guess it will have to do the trick for now.
When you get there you will know what to look for!
Such beauty contained….he had a wonderful imagination, and skill.
One day I would like to see that garden.
Jen @ Muddy Boot Dreams
We found it a very inspiring place.
thanks for this review – I am fascinated by Monet and his work, in the mutual relationship between the garden and art and photography, and how each shapes the other, and the Holmes book is just what I want to read next. Giverny is top of my bucket list.
I’m sure you will love it.
These gardens are amazing! Thank you for sharing these pictures. =)
You’re welcome!