How to Make a Monet Garden

Multi-Level Plantings

• Monet's gardens are fluid, naturalized and dynamic. In emulating his style, vegetation of multiple heights must be mixed together and the different planting areas should only be loosely defined, blending into each other without strict demarcation. Monet considered color harmony when planting flowers, and then he left them to grow to their natural sizes and shapes. Monet mixed plain flowers with the rare flowers he learned about in his botany studies. Do not divide areas with edging, incorporate formal lawns or use trees as focal points. Instead, mix smaller annuals and perennials in scattered clumps in the foreground and surround these with larger perennial flowers, shrubs and small trees.

Pathways and Flower Borders

• The use of informal walkways with flowering perennials overflowing from the adjacent beds is one of the hallmarks of Monet's gardens. The paths are often carpeted with turf and broad enough for several people to stroll together side-by-side. Many flowering annuals and perennials are seen in Monet's garden paintings, including bearded iris (Iris germanica), which grows in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 3 to 10.

Arbors and Trellises

• Climbing vines and their supporting structures played an important role in Monet's gardens. Consider building a tunnel-like arbor over a broad pathway as seen in many of his paintings. Arbors can also be placed over beds so that flowering vines drip down to the ground flowers growing skyward. Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) and sweet autumn clematis (Clematis maximowicziana.) are two flowering vines that figured prominently in Monet's gardens. These can be grown in USDA zones 5 to 10 and 3 to 8, respectively.

Water Garden

• The size of Monet's pond and water gardens would be difficult to duplicate for the average homeowner, but the design elements and many of the same plants can be cultivated in a garden of smaller scale. Like his flower garden, Monet's pond was not surrounded by mowed grass and formal plantings, but instead overflowed with exuberant colors and textures on all sides. Around the pond, he used primarily a mixture of flowering shrubs and trees, many of which hang over the water's edge. Among the pond garden's highlights, a Japanese bridge is lavishly appointed with wisteria and a weeping willow (Salix spp.), hardy in USDA zones 2 through 9a, along with other deciduous trees are reflected in the pond, which contained hardy water lilies (Nymphaea), hardy in USDA zones 3 to 9.