Claude Monet planted his garden then he painted it, creating priceless artworks. Sandra Ross leads us past the paintings and through the garden, with its inspiring story of creation and resurrection.

The gates are still shut as we arrive early morning at the bottom entrance to Claude Monet’s famous garden in Giverny, two hour’s drive northwest of Paris, France. This is one of the most visited gardens in the world, so we decide to explore the tranquil water garden before it fills with humanity.

Claude Monet, born in 1840, was a remarkable painter who pioneered the Impressionist movement, which saw artists work outdoors in order to depict real life, to paint straight from nature, and to capture the changing effects of light on the landscape. In this quest for ‘transparency’, Monet captured the remarkable quality of light in his garden and expressed it on canvas. His garden was his inspiration. His creative genius was twofold. He designed and planted his garden and then he painted it: a double entendre!

The previous day in Paris, we had queued to visit Musée de l’Orangerie, which had re-opened just two weeks before, after seven years of restoration. Monet’s famous water lily canvases are displayed to perfection. His “poems to light” are hung just as he specified, in two oval galleries each with a skylight, the natural light diffused by a film of netting. And now here we were walking around the same water lily pond; a gentle landscape with the lake surrounded by trees, shrubs, flowers, just as Monet had himself planted. The famous green Japanese bridge is covered in white flowering wisteria and people pause to record this famous moment. Willows are weeping, frogs are calling and light is changing as we move around the lake. Large lilac rhododendrons, burnished apricot tree peonies, plum-hued foliage of prunus and cotinus give depth to the flower border, along with fragrant wallflowers, dianthus, violas, roses and poppies.

Walking back through the tunnel beneath the roadway, we emerge into Monet’s flower garden, Clos Normande. With Monet’s pretty pink house with green shutters in the background, it’s a breathtaking sight. At first glance, it’s a sea of iris - and so much more. The flowerbeds run parallel up to the house, each one 50m long and 2m wide and roped off to prohibit access and to facilitate photography. Our senses are stimulated. Birds chat and our lungs fill with air scented with stocks, freesias and wallflowers.

Each border is abundant with flowers, all carefully planned to a colour scheme. The philosophy is simple: a plot of flowers planted in abundance, the varieties chosen for contrasting and complimentary harmonies. The ‘Pink Border’ contains silene, pink cornflower, phlox, huge pink peonies, cerise nicotiana, violas, pansies, stock and pink phlomis: all softened with a haze of pink forget-me-nots. Tall daylilies, yet to flower, give height to the centre of the border. I imagine they too, will be pink. Similarly the blue border: lilac wallflowers, iris in every shade of blue, mauve, lilac, and even black, allium in huge blue globes, blue cornflowers, violas, honesty, delphinium and blue forget-me-not. There’s a white border and a warm coloured border in red, orange, yellow and lemon.

With a large family to support and no money, Claude Monet could not afford to live in Paris, so he travelled along the route of his beloved Seine river. In the village of Giverny, he found a pretty neighbourhood, an apple orchard, an extraordinary quality of light and a sloping tract of land that sat upon a river. Just what he was after, so he set about sowing flower seeds and vegetables to feed his family. He grew the simple flowers that he loved to paint: poppies, pansies, nasturtium, sunflowers and jonquils. Gradually a sweeping transformation took place. He removed some of the apple trees and planted Japanese cherries and apricots. Eventually he replaced the large dark spruces to create light for the climbing roses he planted. Bulbs, perennials, shrubs, annuals, flowering trees – he planted them all to bloom in their appointed harmonies. He was especially fond of blue and so he painted monochromatic swathes of blue with a hint of yellow and violet as accents. It all emerged from the soil and was captured forever on canvas.

As his financial situation improved with the sale of his paintings, Monet was able to buy the parcel of land beyond the road to make a water garden. Running through this marshy land was a stream, so he dug a ditch and created a pond. Later he had the pond extended to an elongated lake in order to cultivate aquatic plants, including his beloved water lilies.

The simple curved bridge was built in the Japanese style, but painted green and not the traditional red, and capped with a trellis to support wisteria. This water garden has its roots in the Japanese tradition: lake, winding paths and points of contemplation. Monet enhanced the oriental atmosphere by planting bamboo, Japanese maples, tree peonies, weeping willows, water iris and every imaginable variety of water lily.

In my imagination, I can picture an elderly, bearded gentleman sitting on a garden bench, smoking a pipe with his wonderfully expressive hands. I can see him too seated at his easel and painting the scene before me. But he really comes to life as I wander through his home, which remains true to his time. After his death in 1926, the garden passed to his son Michel Monet. No money was spent so it rapidly declined. Claude Monet had employed 10 gardeners at the peak of the garden’s glory. Michel was not interested and had no children. He bequested Giverny to the French nation under an Académie des Beaux-Arts scheme. But with no maintenance bequest, the academy could not fund its renovation and so sought the support of some prominent American benefactors to donate the funds to restore Giverny.

So under the umbrella of the Versailles Foundation, Giverny was completely restored. Flower garden beds were retraced and pathways re-laid. The original apple trees remain along with the pleached lime walk where Monet was often photographed. Indeed it is from these photographs that the garden was recreated. The painstaking task to piece together a garden that took 43 years to build and just a few years to disappear took another three years and Giverny opened to the public in 1980.

The planting schemes remain faithful to Monet’s colours. Six gardeners work tirelessly to maintain them, especially once the garden closes on October 31 for five months. Beds are stripped, frost-tender plants are dug up to spend the forthcoming cold winter in a heated glasshouse. Dahlia tubers are dried, labelled and stored. And then it all starts again with 180,000 annuals and the same number of perennials, all raised from seed. Beds are dug, renovated and fertilised. Thousands of bulbs are planted before winter sets in and the ground freezes. And then once again in spring - what a glorious resurrection!

High ho roses!

Roses are best seen at eye level, climbing over arbours and arches. Make sure your arch is wide enough for two people to walk through without being pricked. Plant a rose of the same variety at each end to meet in the centre. A good metallurgist will create the arbour of your dreams

Under roses

Standard roses allow plenty of space beneath for planting a mass of flowers. Pansies, petunias, iris, wallflowers, campanulas, salvia and lamb’s ear all grow well and won’t out-compete the rose for food.

Softly, softly

Careful colour planning gives charming results. If you want a soft and feminine garden, choose melodious colours such as pink with mauve. To give your garden a romantic quality, repeat this colour scheme throughout.

Weed free

Truly fabulous flower gardens result from planting a mixture of annual and perennial flowers so there are no bare patches. Avoid over-planting flowering plants or a lack of light will inhibit your flowers, allowing weed seeds to germinate.

Opposites attract

Use flower combinations to create drama in your garden. Purple and orange are opposite on the colour wheel, so when planted together, they add commotion and excitement.

Border security

Border plants will define a pathway and soften the overall design of a garden. Choose ground hugging, soft-textured plants that won’t scratch your legs. We like dwarf catmint, bearded iris, nasturtium and scented leafed geranium.