The Gardens of France - The Abbey of St Georges & Monet's Garden at Giverny.

The Gardens of France – The Abbey of St Georges & Monet’s Garden at Giverny.

When we started preparing our planning for our five week touring holiday of France, we definitely wanted to include some of the magical French gardens and we have been really luck and seen two totally different gardens in the past two days.

The first special garden we have seen we came upon by accident. We had been driving, for some time along beside the River Seine towards the City of Rouen and we were really enjoying all the small country villages that we passed through, when up on a hill we noticed this magnificent Abbey.

When we investigated further we discovered that as well as there being a beautifully restored 12^th century Romanesque Abbey with remarkable biblical statues and carved capitals there was also a small walled and beautifully laid out monks’ garden that was just a garden lover’s dream.

the Abbey of St. Georges. The gardens are behind the Abbey.

 

View from the well set out green of the Abbey and some of the other buildings in the complex.

 

Part of the old Abbey that is now used as a visitors centre.

 

There was a kitchen garden full of flowering plants with medical properties and aromatic plants, a structured orchard, espalier styled small fruit trees, raspberry and black current bushes and other edible flowers and a well-kept vegetable gardens with plenty of edible products. All the gardens had little fences that were made out of pruning off cuts and they really made the garden beds stand out and look very neat and trim.

Over looking the mixed vegetable garden with the little chapel in the background.

The pear trees in the orchard.

There were other restored buildings on this walled site including a small charming chapel and we really enjoyed doing our own self-guided tour of the whole complex with our own audio device.

The second garden we visited was Claude Monet’s Garden in Giverny. The world renowned impressionist artist Claude Monet in 1883 rented a house in the small village of Giverny and painted here until his death in 1926.

The house which is quite large and spacious for a cottage and it is just lovely. It is painted light pink and every window has bright green shutters and the doors and wooden railings are also bright green and it is covered with pink and yellow climbing roses. Inside every room it decorated in a different palette of colour that Monet admired. The kitchen is all blues and the dining room bright yellows. The house was a delight to explore. It is now known as the Foundation Claude Monet and it along with the fantastic gardens are open to the public. The gardens are wonderful and just a mass of colour that change with the seasons These gardens that Monet designed himself were the inspiration for many of his works.

Monet's Cottage where he lived with his family and where he painted many of his famous paintings.

                          Some of the views of the general garden around Monet's Cottage.

The gardens are a mass of different sorts of flowers -they are not carefully planted but they look very pretty when all the colours merge together.

The garden which was across the road had a very large Lilly pond, Japanese inspired green bridges and beautiful water lilies and it was just magnificent and a lot more remarkable in real life than what I have seen in documentaries.

At one end of the Water lily Garden were beautiful weeping willows. They really framed some very pretty pictures of the pond. I can see why Monet would have enjoyed painting in his garden.

 

The Water Lilies were in full bloom and there were tiny baby ducks swimming about on the water.

 

 The reflections in the Water Lily Pond were just magnificent. We arrived early in the morning before it got to hot and before there were too many people.

                                          This is me at the Water Lily Garden at Monet's Garden.

We spent several hours walking through the different sections of the gardens and just sitting and taking in all the different sights and colours and enjoying the wonderful fragrances of all the different plants. Except for a well laid out grid of flower beds, paths and arches the plantings are a wild mixture of different flowers and just a profusion of colour. However there does seem to be grouping of yellows, pinks/purples and blues – but mix them all together and you have something quite extraordinary.

 

 

The fantastic view from the castle overlooking the old town of Les Andelys and the River Seine.

Chateau Gaillard. This is the view we had from our cabin deck.

We have stayed two nights at a lovely little place called Les Andelys situated on the gracefully meandering Seine River. Above the town towers the ruins of the Chateau Gaillard which was built by Richard the Lionheart, the King of England and Duke of Normandy back in 1197. The views from up at the Chateau overlooking the River Seine are just fantastic. This town also has a wonderful medieval section with many very well preserved half-timbered houses and beautiful old church.