Monet in New York

If you are not able to travel to Giverny, France to experience the world famous gardens of Claude Monet, you can visit New York. In the Bronx over the next several months, the New York Botanical Garden will offer a taste of Monet’s indisputably radiant living masterpiece — a riotous display of color, plant variety and landscape design.



The exhibition, which runs through Oct. 21, will feature a seasonally changing display of flora, currently a spring kaleidoscope of poppies, roses, foxgloves, irises and delphiniums inside the botanical garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservancy. It also includes two scarcely seen garden-inspired paintings, Monet’s wooden palette, rare photos of Monet in his garden and 30 photographs of Giverny by Elizabeth Murray, who has recorded Monet’s flower oasis for 25 years. These are all located at the botanical garden’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

A facade of Monet’s pink stucco house with its bright green shutters — a historically accurate replica by Tony Award-winning set designer Scott Park — marks the start of the exhibition. From there, visitors are led down the Grand Allee, a shorter recreation of Monet’s rose-covered trellis pathway lined on both sides with thick beds of vibrant flowers. The path opens up to a replica of his famous Japanese footbridge arching over a water lily pool encircled by willow trees and flowering shrubs.

In the courtyard outside the Victorian greenhouse, two immense water basins contain a plethora of water lilies.

Claude Monet, artist and avid gardener, lead the Impressionist movement and revolutionized painting in the 1870s.

The story is that Claude Monet noticed the village of Giverny while looking out of a train window. He made up his mind to move there and rented a house and the area surrounding it. In 1890 he had enough money to buy the house and land outright and set out to create the magnificent gardens he wanted to paint.

Talk about the power of imagination!

Sunday Sketches

In Peru at the Willka T'ika Guesthouse, I became fascinated with flowers of the Ruda plant also known as Rue.

Carol, who created the fabulous gardens and guesthouse, says that the it is an important protection plant and one of the native Andean medicinal plants. Because it is the "golden light of life" she planted it abundantly in the fourth chakra garden relating to the sun and the solar plexus. Each day Carol adorns her hat with flowers and Ruda is one of her favorites.

I sketched the flowers of the Ruda plant one day while enjoying the gardens.



The bright yellow fringed flowers with protruding stamens are star-like, and grow in clusters, facing straight up. The central flower has five petals, while all other have four. The rounded petals are initially curled around the center and slowly open up, forming a protective shield for the light green, four/five-lobbed ovary, which gradually swells up, until the petals are no longer necessary and drop.

One of the most striking features of this plant is the strong, aromatic, bitter or acrid scent, but once you get used to it, it can be very soothing and comforting.

Here are a couple of photographs of Ruda.

Rhodys In Abundance

Sunday I traveled with my friend, Janet, to Sequim to catch the last day of the Sequim Art Show and to pick up my watercolor painting. Janet suggested we stop at the rhododendron garden on our way.

I had never been to Whitney Gardens & Nursery in Brinnon, Washington, and what a RARE TREAT. Whitney Gardens is at the foot of the Olympic Mountains and has the most beautiful array of rhododendron hybrids and species in the Northwest nestled among rare trees and ponds. Also in abundance are azaleas, magnolias, maples, conifers, kalmias, camellias, perennials, trees, shrubs and ground cover. It is definitely a breathtaking experience especially when the rhodys are in full bloom as we experienced.

My favorite was this Rhody tree whose name I have misplaced.


The small greenhouses of rhododendrons were organized by colors and one greenhouse had fragrant varieties.


I especially like the colors and rows of maples.

Van Gogh's Gardens

Did you know that Van Gogh made many drawings and paintings of gardens? Apparently, gardens are identified as a favorite motif of Van Gogh.


Flowering Garden with Path
Vincent Van Gogh (Arles July 1888)
Oil on canvas, 72 x 91cm,


Flowering Garden
Vincent Van Gogh (Arles July 1888)
Oil on canvas, 92.0 x 73.0 cm.

Here is the letter to his brother, Theo, about the above paintings.