Monet's Garden
Author: Gary Hill

You can visit Monet's garden at Giverny in France - it's a
truly wonderful experience.

The artist Money created a lasting and wonderful garden in the
small town of Giverny near to Paris. The garden was where he did
many of his paintings and the inspirational scenes remain today.
Visiting Monet's garden is like walking around inside an
impressionist painting.

Giverny is less than an hour to the west of Paris. The garden
is open from April to October except on Mondays - it's a
wonderful place to visit but beware - it's very popular with
tourists - and you're not likely to find a quiet time or place
for reflection.

The water lily pond with the Japanese bridge that features in
one of the artists most famous - and certainly most reproduced -
paintings forms the centre point of the garden. The plants grow
in great drifts of colour and you can clearly see where the
inspiration for the impressionist style of painting came from.
Not all of the garden is based around flowers. Some of the most
pleasant sights are of the lawns and shrubs planted by Claude
Monet - his eye for design and balance is to be found everywhere
you look - even in the smallest details.

Monet lived in the house by the garden from 1883 until he died
in 1926 and he believed that the garden was his greatest
masterpiece - a bigger work than any of the paintings that the
garden gave life to. The gardens are maintained by great squads
of gardeners and helpers who work from dawn to dusk year round
to ensure that the gift to the world left by the artist is
regenerated year after year.

The best time to visit Monet's garden is probably in May or
June when the rhododendrons are in full bloom and the wisteria
is draping itself over the Japanses bridge - but to be honest,
the whole place is overwhelmingly beautiful at any time of the
year.

You can get to Giverny by taking a train from the Gare Paris St
Lazare to the nearby town of Vernon. The journey takes about
forty minutes and there are five trains a day. Once at Vernon
you can either take a bus from the station or rent a bike and
enjoy the short cycle to the outskirts of Giverny. You can also
take a bus from the centre of Paris to Giverny itself - a
pleasant and quiet small town with many nice cafes and bistros.

Near to Monet's garden is the Musee d'Art Americain - a large
museum devoted to the work of the American artists who came to
France at and around the turn of the century to sit at the feet
of the great impressionist masters.

As a day trip from Paris - or as part of a specialist garden
tour - a visit to the artists garden at Giverny is a wonderful
way to pass the time. You can step back into a time when the
world was a different place and when life truly ran at a
different pace. Take your camera (and maybe your sketch pad) and
perhaps you'll be inspired too to create either a work of art or
another great garden of your own when you return home.


About The Author: Gary Hill is a travel writer from Scotland.
He writes frequently about European vacation trips. You can read
more of his published articles on http://europe4vacations.com