CANVASES, CARATS AND CURIOSITIES

Perhaps no artist cultivated a more famous garden than the great Claude Monet who built his famous at Giverny. For more than two decades, the Impressionist master tended, planted and reimagined this corner of Normandy as a living studio.

Giverny is best understood as two distinct gardens in conversation with one another. On one side of the road sits the Clos Normand, a formal flower garden that slopes gently downward from the façade of Monet's house toward the road. The other, separated by that same road and connected by an underpass, is Monet's famous Japanese-inspired water garden.

The contrast between the two sections is purposeful. The Clos Normand speaks the language of structure and color: a central alley, once lined with pines that Monet tried to eliminate but ultimately reduced to just two at the insistence of his partner Alice Hoschedé, bisects the space and creates an axis of symmetry. Iron arches draped with climbing roses frame this central path, while surrounding flowerbeds are planted in layers of varying heights because Monet did not impose rigid order on these beds. He preferred to marry plants together and allow them to grow with a degree of freedom.

Though freeform, his plant selections were extremely intentional. Monet constantly exchanged specimens with fellow horticulturalists and friends, among them Georges Clemenceau and fellow Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte, and was perpetually searching for unusual varieties to incorporate into his compositions. It is no surprise that the founding genius of the Impressionist movement was ever in pursuit of new colors and forms, both in his garden and on his canvas.

The Water Garden

Monet’s water garden came later. Roughly ten years after Monet's 1883 arrival at Giverny, he purchased a neighboring parcel of land that contained a small brook. He diverted the water, expanded it into a pond and populated it with water lilies, weeping willows and bamboo groves, crowning the scene with a Japanese-inspired footbridge draped in cascading wisteria. Monet's neighbors, it should be noted, were not immediately charmed. Local residents raised concerns that the artist's exotic aquatic plantings might contaminate the water supply, a fear that proved unfounded but speaks to just how unconventional his vision appeared at the time.

In the pond’s surface, Monet discovered something no painter had pursued so fully: the reflection. In his waterlily scenes, water completely transformed the sky and surrounding willows through Monet's mirroring. Light fractured, colors deepened and the boundary between what was real and what was reflected dissolved entirely. This inverted world, transfigured by water, became the central preoccupation of the last chapter of his career. The Nymphéas series, painted across more than two decades and displayed today in their own room at Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, ranks among the most revered and important bodies of work in Western art.

Giverny Today

After Monet’s death in 1926, the property fell into gradual disrepair before a decades-long restoration effort returned it to something close to its original splendor. Today, the gardens at Giverny draw more than 500,000 visitors annually, making them one of the most visited sites in France. Access for painters is granted only by permission of the Fondation Monet, a high honor and, for many, a sacred experience.

Louis Comfort Tiffany: Nature as Decorative Language

Laurelton Hall: A Work of Art

Conceived in 1902, Laurelton Hall was Louis Comfort Tiffany's most ambitious personal project—an immersive environment designed to unite architecture, landscape and the decorative arts. Overlooking Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island's North Shore, the 84-room estate functioned as both a residence and a creative laboratory, where nature was studied, abstracted and transformed into art.

The Gardens as Living Design Studio

Spanning roughly 60 acres, the gardens at Laurelton Hall were as carefully orchestrated as the estate’s interior. Terraced lawns, fountains, reflecting pools, conservatories and wisteria pergolas unfolded toward the harbor. Water flowed from a spring-fed fountain inside the reception hall through a series of outdoor basins, creating the sense that architecture and landscape operated as a unified whole. Contemporary accounts indicate the gardens ultimately exceeded the cost of the house itself.

Nearly every botanical element cultivated at Laurelton Hall found expression in Tiffany's decorative arts. Apple blossoms lining the drive reappeared in leaded glass lamps and windows, while vines, flowers and leaves were studied for their geometry, translucency and response to light. Tiffany's close observation of plants—how light filtered through petals or pooled within a bloom—translated directly into the chromatic depth and surface modulation of his Favrile glass. The estate served as his primary place of study, where nature became Tiffany's disciplined visual language.

Artists and Designers at Laurelton Hall

Laurelton Hall also functioned as an informal artist colony, welcoming leading figures from Tiffany Studios who worked, studied and collaborated on site. In 1911, Tiffany invited American artist Jane Peterson to the estate, where she remained for many months painting the gardens. Her deep affinity for nature, particularly flowers, would become an increasingly central subject in her work. She later remarked, "I adore gardens! They are the most elusive art of a nation."

After 1912, Peterson seemingly worked from a new sense of authority and nature-born curiosity, working primarily in gouache, a medium that afforded greater freedom for plein air painting and spontaneous color. She frequently combined charcoal with gouache, using drawn underdrawing to liberate her brushwork. Designers, draftsmen and artisans from Tiffany Studios regularly visited the estate as well, sketching plant forms, architectural details and garden vistas that later appeared in windows and objects.

Legacy and Preservation

Although Tiffany died in 1933, Laurelton Hall stood until a catastrophic fire in 1957 destroyed much of the estate. Through the efforts of collectors Hugh and Jeannette McKean, significant architectural fragments, windows and decorative panels were salvaged. These works are preserved today at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, the world's largest repository of Tiffany material. What survives—a few photographs, architectural remnants and paintings — offers a rare glimpse into Tiffany's most personal vision: "a place for dreams," in his own words.

Other Famous Gardens Created by Artists

Frida Kahlo and the Casa Azul garden in Coyoacán

For Frida Kahlo, the garden of Casa Azul—the cobalt-painted house in Coyoacán, Mexico, where she was born and died, was both sanctuary and subject. Dense with native plants, pre-Columbian sculptures and roaming animals, the garden reflected Kahlo's deep engagement with Mexican identity and the natural world. Its lush, enclosed atmosphere appears throughout her work, most notably in paintings that collapse the traditional boundary between the human figure and botanical life. Today, Casa Azul operates as the Museo Frida Kahlo, and the garden remains largely intact as she left it.

Georgia O’Keeffe and her desert landscape at Ghost Ranch

Georgia O'Keeffe's relationship with the high desert of New Mexico was less horticultural than geological—her "garden" was the landscape itself. At Ghost Ranch and her nearby home in Abiquiú, O'Keeffe cultivated a spare courtyard garden that mirrored the austere beauty of the surrounding terrain: bleached bone, sage, red earth and open sky. The landscape became her primary visual vocabulary, informing the monumental close-up flower paintings, animal skulls and sweeping mesa compositions that define her mature work. She lived and worked there until her death in 1986.

Henri Martin and the Gardens at Marquayrol

Post-Impressionist painter Henri Martin established his studio at Marquayrol in Labastide-du-Vert, near Cahors in the Lot Valley of southwestern France, where he painted until the end of his life. The property's gardens—composed of ponds, pergolas, gazebos and centuries-old trees—served as his primary source of inspiration, and their forms appear throughout his Pointillist-influenced canvases.

Today, the gardens are being rehabilitated by the Association for the Rehabilitation of the Extraordinary Gardens of Henri Martin (ARJEHM) and may be visited in conjunction with the Henri Martin Museum in Cahors, which holds the largest public collection of his work.

Artists are driven by the need to capture and transform the world around us, finding beauty and meaning in things big and small. It is no surprise that many are drawn to gardens as a pure expression of nature's beauty. As Renoir said, “Why should art be ugly? There are enough ugly things in the world.” These famous artists' gardens, and many more, continue to inspire today, Interested in more fine art celebrating the natural world? Check out our landscape and marine collections today!

Works Cited:

Artsy. “Georgia O’Keeffe’s Garden Is Still Growing Three Decades After Her Death.” Accessed February 24, 2026.

Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney. Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall: An Artist’s Country Estate. Exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 21, 2006–May 20, 2007. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Giverny.org. “Giverny Monet’s Garden: Visit.” Accessed February 24, 2026.

Gray, Christopher. “The Mansion That Got Away.” New York Times, October 29, 2006. ISSN 0362-4331. Accessed February 20, 2023.

Isaacson, Joel. “Monet, (Oscar-)Claude.” Oxford Art Online. 2003.

New York Botanical Garden Library. “Monet’s Garden Research Guides.” Accessed February 24, 2026.

Something Curated. “The Story Behind Frida Kahlo’s Art-Filled Garden.” July 26, 2024. Accessed February 24, 2026.