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Frog Blog...

June 2011

This year will mark the 100th Anniversary of Monet's garden at Giverny.
It is curious that he is remembered chefly as a painter of gardens, more than as an actual gardener. In fact, he was an active and knowledgable gardener, and closely directed a team of gardeners to create the scenes made famous by his paintings.
His garden style was very much the wildflower/cottage garden style so popular today, with massed perennials and roses in riotous abundance. This unkempt, natural look is in fact the result of countless hours of work, and is much more labour intensive than seasonal colour planting, which requires two seasonal bursts of activity per year, with only a bit of weeding and watering in between.
The control of weeds in a perennial bed is a highly skilled activity, and requires constant effort, as do the tasks of dead-heading, dividing, staking etc etc.
Monet's garden style has never really been out of fashion, it was only sidelined for a few years by the series of efforts to "do it on the cheap" with annuals, shrubs etc., which of course have their place but will always really come second to the perennial bed "cottage garden writ large" of Giverny, Great Dixter, Hidcote etc.

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