Chicago Botanic Garden

Education — Lenhardt Library

Current Books & Book Reviews

PHOTO: bookcover

Elizabeth Murray.
Monet’s Passion: Ideas, Inspirations & Insights
from the Painter’s Gardens.
Petaluma, Calif.: Pomegranate, 2010.
Decorated boards, 127 pp., ISBN 978–0–764–95389–7, $35.

Following a tour of European gardens and museums, gardener and artist Elizabeth Murray left her position in California and took up a volunteer post as a gardener at Giverny, France, at the former home and garden of French Impressionist artist Claude Monet (1840–1926). She describes him as a “master gardener, horticulturist, and colorist,” directing attention to his artistry exhibited throughout his property. Featuring three acres of flowers set before the residence plus a separate two acres for a water lily garden, the site was the scene of his remarkable paintings in the Impressionist style. She describes his garden as the setting relates to individual paintings; provides an illustrated plan of these sites; includes gorgeous photographs of sweeps of flowers in the garden today; and gives visual aids through color studies of plantings, which may be copied in the reader’s own home garden. This book will inspire the artist in every gardener.

— Marilyn K. Alaimo, garden writer and volunteer, Chicago Botanic Garden.