Monet, the garden at Giverny

Le Givre À Giverny, 1885

Coming into Giverny in Winter, Sunset (1885)

Prateria a Giverny, 1885

The entrance to Giverny under the snow, 1885

Sunset at Giverny, 1886

Meadow at Giverny, Morning Effect (1888)

Grainstack at Giverny, 1889

Springtime in Giverny, 1890

Morning on the Seine, near Giverny 1897

L’Ile aux Orties, 1897

At the beginning of May 1883, Monet and his large family rented a house and 2 acres (8,100 m2) from a local landowner. The house was situated near the main road between the towns of Vernon and Gasny at Giverny. There was a barn that doubled as a painting studio, orchards and a small garden. The house was close enough to the local schools for the children to attend and the surrounding landscape offered many suitable motifs for Monet's work. The family worked and built up the gardens and Monet's fortunes began to change for the better as his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had increasing success in selling his paintings. By November 1890, Monet was prosperous enough to buy the house, the surrounding buildings and the land for his gardens. During the 1890s, Monet built a greenhouse and a second studio, a spacious building well lit with skylights.

Monet wrote daily instructions to his gardener, precise designs and layouts for plantings, and invoices for his floral purchases and his collection of botany books. As Monet's wealth grew, his garden evolved. He remained its architect, even after he hired seven gardeners.

Monet purchased additional land with a water meadow. In 1893 he began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best known works. White water lilies local to France were planted along with imported cultivars from South America and Egypt, resulting in a range of colours including yellow, blue and white lilies that turned pink with age.
In 1899 he began painting the water lilies, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature, and later on the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life. This scenery, with its alternating light and mirror-like reflections, became an integral part of his work. Monet had achieved, according to Gary Tinterow (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), a completely new, fluid, and audacious style of painting by the mid-1910s in which the water lily pond became the starting point for an essentially abstract form of art.

from wikipedia