France has endured record-breaking successions of heatwaves this summer, which have led to massive wildfires and a spike in the normal death rate, according to French public health services. Gardeners are also struggling with the scorching heat, including at one of the country’s most cherished landmarks: Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, Normandy.
“It’s incredibly sad,” Rémi Lecoutre, deputy head gardener at the Claude Monet House and Gardens museum, told France 24. “This is the first time it has happened to this extent. It’s awful.”
Lecoutre showed reporters where nasturtiums typically grow at this time of year, now among the flowers entirely killed off by the heat. He and a team of gardeners are trying to protect what flora they can by grouping more plants together and targeting the watering of more vulnerable flowers at night. Their efforts appear to be paying off, and the damage remains mostly visible on slightly closer inspection, according to media reports.
“With mini-sprinklers and underground irrigation, we were able to fight against water stress,” Lecoutre told France 3. “That said, some foliage still burned. There are physiological phenomena happening at the plant level. They close their stomata, and they stop flowering. So we had a lot of wilted flowers. It’s also the gardener’s job to adapt … and work out solutions for the heat.”
Lecoutre and his team are also considering shifting to more heat-resilient plants in the future, while also planning for earlier blooms as plants are thrown off their usual schedule, in response to the intense heat. These changes, however, can present another quagmire: This unique garden, crowned by Monet’s beautifully preserved home, painted pink with green trim, is meant to invoke the iconic floral landscapes depicted in the Impressionist’s paintings, even if it cannot claim to be a precise replica.
“Since it’s a historic garden, it’s best that these plants answer to the aesthetic criteria, and that they are as close as possible to the plants that Monet knew,” Lecoutre told France 24. But the gardeners are not afraid to take some liberties. “Ultimately, we are not a museum garden, but truly a space that evolves with its time,” Lecoutre said.
In fact, Monet himself wanted gardens full of diverse types of plants, often landscaping with compositions of successive waves of flowers that only bloomed for a few weeks, creating an artwork in itself. “That is the added value of this garden here in Giverny: lots of plants with a short cycle, but in very large numbers,” the gardener explained.
On that note, one type of flower that Monet loved luckily doesn’t mind the rising temperatures: His famous water lilies love the heat—and are apparently thriving.
This year also marks the 100th anniversary of Monet’s death, which is being commemorated with several fall exhibitions and events. In Paris alone, the Musée de l’Orangerie will present “Monet: Painting Time,” opening September 30, while the Musée Marmottan Monet will host the exhibition, “Stories of Landscapes: From Monet to Hockney (1893 to 2026)” opening September 24, featuring the Impressionist’s paintings in dialogue with modern and contemporary artists.
