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The New York Botanical Garden, a vast 100-hectare park in the Bronx, is nowhere near France, of course. But through October 21, it is offering visitors a partial view of France’s most famous ornamental gardens, those cultivated by French impressionist painter Claude Monet for more than 40 years. “I perhaps owe becoming a painter to flowers,” Monet once wrote. He repaid the debt in paintings shimmering with light and color. Many are of the flower and water gardens at his home in Giverny, in the northern French countryside. Beginning last spring, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the New York Botanical Garden re-created a bit of Giverny's gardens that many know only from Monet’s paintings: from his rambling flower garden, to a Japanese-style water garden. “He really was this amazing gardener, and created these wonderful combinations of plants, and flowers - which are the highlight here at the New York Botanical Garden - are the inspiration for his paintings," says director of exhibitions Karen Daubmann, The “grand allée,” entered through a replica of Monet’s house door, is a wild profusion of colors and shapes: dahlias, roses, daisies and dozens of others. Daubman notes that many of the same flowers do well in the Bronx. "These are agapanthus," she said, pointing at lavender-colored globes of bell-like blossoms. "These are really important plants in Monet’s garden. He painted them. So, [we] knew that those are definitely something that needed to be included in the display here." | 
