Phipps' 'Monet in Bloom' recreates works of French Impressionist

In preparing for the “Summer Flower Show: Monet in Bloom” at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, designer Jordyn Melino sat in front of Claude Monet’s 20-foot “Water Lilies” painting in the nearby Carnegie Museum of Art.

“(I) appreciated the color and textures of the original,” said Melino, Phipps’ associate director of exhibits. “Experiencing the original helped me to design a planted vertical wall to represent one of his iconic water lily paintings.”

Inspired by the 19th- and early 20th-century works of the French Impressionist, “Monet in Bloom” opens Saturday at the historic glasshouse in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood.

The exhibition follows in the footsteps of Phipps’ tribute to another Impressionist master, “Van Gogh in Bloom,” from 2019.

“We have been having a lot of fun reimagining classic works as garden displays, and from the visitor response to our 2019 Van Gogh show, our visitors are enjoying it too,” Melino said. “It’s not in the works just yet, but I imagine we will be continuing with this trend, and I’m hoping to celebrate the work of a female artist in the future.”

The vertical “Water Lilies” display in the Welcome Center was created with lobelia, begonias and other flowers in the Welcome Center.

For “The Woman in Green” in Palm Court, “we created a topiary frame shaped as a long flowing dress and planted it with stripes of black and green mondo grass, then created a jacket using coco fiber and other dried plant materials,” Melino said. “The figure’s hands and face were made using parts of a staghorn fern that we collected from our specimen in the Fern Room.”

Courtesy of Paul g. Wiegman

A tableau in the East Room is part of "Summer Flower Show: Monet in Bloom," at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh.

Monet’s own gardens in Giverny, France, inspired other tableaux. Another water lily painting is represented in the Serpentine Room, with plantings inspired by Monet’s Japanese garden.

“We dug out the gardens to create three large ponds to hold tropical water lilies, surrounded by a few specimen Japanese maples, weeping willows and bamboo,” Melino said. “In this room, we also have a series of white flowering Asiatic lilies which will be a first for us to include in a summer show, as they have a short bloom period.

“To extend their flower display, we grew a series of lilies in different stages, so as the ones in the room finish blooming, we can switch out with freshly blooming lilies from our greenhouse,” she added.

In addition, visitors to the summer show can see:

• Arbors recreated from Monet’s garden, painted in his signature green and covered with annual vines and garden bed mixes

• “The Saint-Lazare Station” in the Sunken Garden, featuring a massive train with bugleweed tracks and steam billows made from dusty miller and verbena in hanging baskets

• Monet’s “Studio Boat” floating in the Victoria Room pond surrounded by beds of impatiens, begonias and other colorful blooms

• “The Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil,” a photo station by a vintage wagon between tall plantings of canna, everlastings and sunflowers

• “Woman with a Parasol,” where arbors arch skyward and Monet-green benches invite relaxation in the South Conservatory

• A special surprise at the end of the path in the Serpentine Room.

“Monet often said that his greatest work of art was his garden, and his love of plants definitely comes through in the subject of his paintings,” Melino said. “He also painted en plein air, or outside in nature, which provided the opportunity to capture landscapes in natural light.

“Working outside in this style informed his brushstroke style,” she said. “We tried to capture that same style using plants as our palette, with wavy and rippled foliage, accented by dots of contrasting brightly colored flowers.”

“Summer Flower Show: Monet in Bloom” runs through Sept. 25. Hours are 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. daily and until 10 p.m. Fridays.

All tickets must be reserved in advance. Masks currently are optional but recommended. For information, visit phipps.conservatory.org.