MAKE HOME A WORK OF ART: EVERYDAY MONET
EVERYDAY MONET: A GIVERNY- INSPIRED GARDENING AND LIFESTYLE GUIDE TO LIVING YOUR BEST IMPRESSIONIST LIFE
The dances of butterflies and flowers borne on soft breezes, languorous picnics abetted with chilled rosé under azure skies as airy whipped cream cloud puffs float ever-so-lightly overhead, this is the soul of summer swelling large in Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny.
If you’ve ever been to the Monet homestead in the French countryside in Normandy, his summer soul has touched yours. If you’ve gazed upon his famous masterpiece paintings in a museum, you feel what the gifts of spring and summer have done to him every year of his life.
Monet, one of the founders of French Impressionist painting, bought the house and land in 1890 and set out to create the magnificent gardens he wanted to paint.
Romantic, yet with a sweet simplicity, Monet’s garden aesthetics carried through to his home interiors, his cooking, and entertaining, all of which embodied the many beauties of fin de siècle French life.
“Everyday Monet: A Giverny-Inspired Gardening and Lifestyle Guide to Living Your Best Impressionist Life,” by Aileen Bordman helps bring Monet’s aesthetic and joie de vivre into your own home and garden.
The book is filled with beautiful photos of Monet’s lush gardens: a flower garden, called “Clos Normand,” in front of the house and a Japanese inspired water garden on the other side of the road. Some of Monet’s most famous garden paintings are also included.
"My garden is my most beautiful work of art" – Claude Monet.
Once you fall in love with the images, you’ll likely be tempted to live the life. Bordman teaches you how to create touches of the Monet lifestyle.
Filled with insights, step-by-step instructions, musings, recipes, gorgeous photography, and how-to graphics, the book teaches how to grow a garden, manage a lily pond, arrange flowers, decorate rooms and tabletops, and turn out retro feasts, just as Monet did.
You’ll find step-by-step instructions on how to grow your own water lilies, roses, tulips, and poppies; how to create a Monet-inspired picnic with delicious recipes; and how to turn a bathroom into a gracious retreat, among many other easy-to-implement ideas.
Monet’s color palette, sense of composition, sensitivity to textures, general taste and style are all documented and translated for today’s impressionists-at-heart.
The "Monet Flowering Calendar" lists a collection of Monet's flowers of each month of the year. One full chapter presents Monet's concepts for arranging flowers for different locations in your home and workplace. And there is much more...
Everything in this glorious book is as authentic as can be. Bordman has brought it all to bear from an exclusive insider perspective. Her mother, Helen Rappel Bordman, has served as the steward of the Giverny estate since 1980. Gilbert Vahé, Giverny’s head gardener, since 1977, shares his own direct knowledge. So the book is also deeply personal.
Whether you live on a country estate or in a city apartment, this book offers lovely ideas and practical tips that you can use to add beauty and grace to your space, inside and out. It’s a memorable keepsake to treasure.
"Aileen has captured the essence of Giverny in the beautiful text and photography of Everyday Monet." -- Meryl Streep
“Everyday Monet is more than a poem—it is a poem set to music, a melodic tribute to a beautifully tended life, imprinted in history and retold here as an everyday fairy tale come to life” -- Barbara Lazaroff, Co-founder, Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining.
For more of Aileen Bordman’s insights and writings on Monet, check out her website, Monet's Palate. Check out Monet’s Palate Cookbook and other garden inspired books here.
Read more about Summer Soul in Beautiful Places to Recharge Soul, Indulge in the Beauty of Slow Travel, Soulful Summer Wonderlands, 10 Most Gorgeous Glamping Spots, 10 Best Places to Camp Under the Stars and 10 Beautiful Recipe For Your Summer Soul.
And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
Do you have amazing photos? Enter them in this week’s BN Photo Contest. We run new creative contest every week!
All photos are from “Everyday Monet: A Giverny-Inspired Gardening and Lifestyle Guide to Living Your Best Impressionist Life,” book by Aileen Bordman. Courtesy of Dey Street Books / HarperCollins.
- Photo: by Aileen Boardman.”Le Clos Normand.”
- Photo: “Everyday Monet: A Giverny-Inspired Gardening and Lifestyle Guide to Living Your Best Impressionist Life,” book by Aileen Bordman.
- Photo: by Aileen Boardman. “Chair and pail.”
- Photo: by Robert Sheldon. “Water Lily How to Step 3.”
- Photo: by Aileen Boardman. “Dutch Iris Arrangement.”
- Photo: by Aileen Boardman.”Le Clos Normand.”
- Photo: by Aileen Boardman.”Le Clos Normand.”
- Photo: by Aileen Boardman.”Le Clos Normand.”
- Photo: Aileen Bordman on Monet’s Garden bridge.
- Photo: “Waterlilies and the Japanese Bridge.” Painting by Claude Monet.
- Photo: “Water Lilies Red.” Painting by Claude Monet.
- Photo: Spring border in bloom at Clos Normand.
- Photo: by Aileen Boardman. ”Dutch Irises.”