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Growing With Phipps: Flowers, trees are paint for a garden like Claude Monet's
Saturday, March 17, 2001 By Celeste Vrabel, Phipps Conservatory, and Botanical Gardens
What impression does your garden convey at first glance?
Were you satisfied with the response, or did not one thought or impression spring to mind? An impressionist garden evokes the feeling of a joyous moment in time, in the same way a painting of this style does. Creating an impressionist garden like the famous Monet garden in Giverny, France, may seem daunting for the average home gardener, but growing a garden that inspires strong impressions can be quite simple.
Claude Monet was a master of using light and color, whether it was on canvas or in soil. The broad dabs of paint from his palette easily made the transition to his garden, where he manipulated color schemes to create specific effects. Massing blue irises or arranging a floral monochrome of red in pink, white and crimson made stunning drift-like effects. This was especially effective when planted where the morning sun could serve as backlighting. Using this same method with flowers of bronze, pink, orange and gold in a garden that is viewed in the evening can enhance the effect of the warm lighting of the sunset.
Planting en masse (many of one type) is an effective garden design method. Spending most of the garden budget on one plant to create a sea of color is a wise choice when that plant is an inexpensive annual or a mass of perennials that only increase in size and beauty each year. Other commonly grown garden flowers that Monet used as "paint" in his gardens were poppies, verbascum, tulips and dahlias.
A delightful book on the present-day Giverny that is full of ideas and garden plans is "Monet's Passion" by Elizabeth Murray (Pomegranate Communications, $34.95).
The skeleton or structure of a garden (or painting) is necessary for the overall success of any design. The gardens at Giverny are home to plants that make a strong structural statement. The mature willow trees in Monet's gardens add gentle movements and graceful lines to the landscape.
However, the smaller plots that most of us garden are not large enough to accommodate these huge trees. Good substitutes to create the feeling of movement and good form in the garden are ornamental grasses, bamboo, contorted hazelnuts and weeping cherries.
Having enough space to have an architectural feature like the beautifully curved Japanese footbridge at Giverny is also not possible for most of us, yet there are simple features we can add to our gardens to create such a focal point.
A curved line of mossy steppingstones that lead to a simple bench is an inexpensive way to create architectural interest.
We can train wisteria over an arbor or grow a water lily in a half barrel, two Monet favorites that he painted almost compulsively. This achieves a different effect from the same plants at various times of day or from different angles.
The use of plants native to the region is an intelligent, progressive method of gardening that Monet was aware of even in 1900. Noticing that indigenous plants performed well, required less care and suffered few insect or disease problems, Monet incorporated many native plants into his landscape.
Unimpressed with fancy, double-flowering blossoms and unnatural-looking variegated hybrids, Monet was again ahead of his time, wisely preferring the natural plantings that were the soul of his many masterpieces.
Fortunately for those of us lacking in genius, we can be inspired by (and copy!) Monet's gift in our gardens.
This is one of a series of periodic columns by staffers of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Celeste Vrabel, a Pleasant Hills resident, is Phipps' volunteer coordinator and an avid gardener.
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