The irises unfold their yellow tones, the petunias and anemones mix in a cascade of intense pinks; Gentians, daffodils and daisies dot the green flowerbeds with their colors. Dahlias, nasturtiums and blue wisteria grow in a spectacular enclosure through which visitors are lost in a still hot autumn. The garden of the house in Giverny, in France, where the painter Claude Monet lived for more than forty years, is the most beautiful painting of him and the best preserved, which changes color with the seasons, as he wished. "I just look at what the universe teaches me and show it through my brush," he said to whom he pointed out his excessive fondness for gardening.

The friendship of a teenage Monet with the painter Eugène Boudin was key to his later dedication to painting and gardens. Boudin always painted outdoors, at a time when all artists reflected in their studios what they had seen outside before. "Little by little," Monet wrote, "my eyes opened, I really understood nature and, at the same time, I began to love it." In 1866 he painted the garden of the family home in Sainte-Adresse, in Normandy. Flowering gardens attract you with their color, the bursting of plants and their lighting. He paints shadows in color and reproduces the flowers with absolute freedom.