Giverny: le Jardin de Claude Monet

Monet moved to Giverny (near vernon) in 1883 and began work on the garden. In 1893 he bought the patch of land
on the other side of the railway, with a stream running through it. He dug out a pond and built the famous Japanese bridge.
Nowadays there is a tunnel under the railway, but Monet had to cross the tracks and the road to get there.

Monet died in 1926, and his son left the garden to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1966. By this time the place was in a very
poor state and in the course of restoration the pond had to be redug, the bridge rebuilt, the trees felled which had grown
inside the studio, etc. Luckily Georges Truffaut, a noted gardener who had often visited the house, was still alive and able
to give advice on replanting – and, of course, the paintings were available to study. The Wallace family, founders of the
Readers' Digest, gave money to restore the house, and the place opened to the public in 1980.

The fascinating thing to me is that the garden was made to provide a model for the paintings,
and now the paintings have provided a model for the gardens.