This Week's Podcast: Homage
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There aren’t very many horticultural brands – words and phrases that are instantly synonymous with visions of a garden. One name stands out — Monet – the impressionist who developed a garden at Giverny in France.
Claude Monet incorporated ideas from Japanese woodblock prints he collected, from his travels through Europe, and from his own incomparable imagination in creating a garden in the Seine Valley northwest of Paris during the final three decades of his life. By the time he began working on his garden in Giverny, he was an experienced, ambitious, and adventurous hands-on gardener and knowledgeable plantsman. No plant, perhaps, is more closely associated with Monet the painter and gardener than the water lily.
25 years ago, our guest this week, Elizabeth Murray, quit her gardening job in Carmel, California to become a full-time volunteer in Monet's garden. Murray is best known, today, for her work writing about and photographing that garden.
“I am passionate for nature and creativity,” says Murray. 
“As a speaker and workshop leader, I use the beauty of my photographic images, personal stories, garden metaphors, andhumor to inspire the imagination of my audience to connect with what has heart and meaning for them, and to express their own creativity.”
Elizabeth Murray’s work has been published in calendars and several books including the award winning Monet’s Passion: Ideas, Inspiration & Insights from Painter’s Gardens. She currently has a show of her photographs as part of the New York Botanical Garden’s Monet’s Garden (May 19-Oct. 21), which includes displays in the greenhouses as well as outdoor plantings and some of the actual water lily varieties Monet grew in NYBG’s lily pools. (photo canvases by Elizabeth Murray)
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