•   The clos normand
•   Le water garden
•   Le pont japonais
•   Les fleurs et plantes
•   Calendrier des floraisons
•   Les saisons
•   Les oeuvres de Giverny
•   Visit

The Clos Normand was designed in the French style, directly in front of the house and with its pathways intersecting at right angles; and despite the profusion, variety and sheer brightness of the colours from one season to the next, order remains the keynote.

Wherever he was living, Monet always had a garden: at Ville d'Avray, Louveciennes, Argenteuil - where his friend Caillebotte made him even keener on gardening - and at Vétheuil.

At Giverny he also had an orchard, whose central path leading to the Chemin du Roy was bordered with spruce, yew and clumps of box. After protracted, painful discussions with his wife Alice he finally kept only the two yew-trees in front of the house, replacing the spruce and box with metal arches and creating an arbour of climbing roses edged with flowers and creeping nasturtiums. His head gardener, Félix Breuil, was the son of the writer Octave Mirbeau and had five assistants!
On the west side, he turned the orchard into lawn scattered with iris and oriental poppy and planted with Japanese cherry and flowering crab apple trees. To the east, he laid out regularly spaced beds of gladioli, larkspur, phlox, daisies, asters and other flowers. Atop the metal trellises beside each bed a sumptuous drapery of clematis undulates in the breeze, with climbing roses lower down. The overall effect is ravishing. The borders are adorned with predominantly blue rock plants, while a mix of annuals and perennials ensures blooms all the year round. In his three hothouses Monet grew begonias, exotic ferns and a superb collection of orchids.