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The gardens where they took refuge and created some of the masterpieces of art history. This is the common thread of the plant treasures scattered around the world to which it is still possible to peek and enter the intimate universe of those who were their extraordinary owners.

Monet's floral dreams (Giverny, France)

Painter and gardener, Claude Monet made Giverny his home and his great masterpiece for 40 years. Fascinated by water, light and its reflection, the father of impressionism shaped the garden of his vegetable dreams. A 45-minute train ride from Paris Saint-Lazare station, Giverny is a must-see for inspiration. You have to do it, of course, between April and November, which is when the Claude Monet Foundation opens this historic garden so inspiring and with so much to explore. To begin with, the pink stucco house where the painter lived and amassed his collection of Japanese prints. Le Clos Normand, with its spots of flowers of a single color, as if they were a palette, and The Water Garden, with the water lilies and that emblematic green bridge that we have seen in their paintings, are a botanical explosion of overwhelming beauty. "I'm good for anything except painting and gardening," Monet used to say.

Green bridge over water lily pond, in Giverny.SHUTTERSTOCK

The Georgia O'Keeffe Desert (New Mexico, USA)

In the 40s, the American artist Georgia O'Keeffe settled in Ghost Ranch, a short distance from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to paint its well-known flowers, its deserts and open skies. Years later he would buy a definitive hacienda in Abiquiú that he would turn into his house and studio, in his orchard and garden. He fed on it for the next four decades (until O'Keeffe died in 1986, aged 98), literally and spiritually. Today, that garden is still one of the protagonists of the visit to the house, open for guided tours. Traced by adobe ditches for irrigation, the garden sits on terraces where they grow (lilacs and chard, cabbages and peaches, apple trees and roses. The grandchildren of the gardener at the time who helped O'Keeffe are now in charge of maintaining it.

Abiquiú, the land of Georgia O'Keeffe, in New Mexico, USA. SHUTTERSTOCK

The oasis of Majorelle (Marrakech)

The artist Jacques Majorelle (1886-1962) built it over 40 years and the couturier Yve Saint Laurent (and his partner, Pierre Bergé) saved it from abandonment and demolition. The Majorelle garden, an essential visit in Marrakech, is an exotic orchard that enchants every time it is visited. Majorelle was not a gardener, but fond of beauty. In his garden he wanted to surround himself with the things he loved. But it was Yves Saint Laurent who made this oasis the garden Majorelle would have dreamed of. Succulents, jasmine, water lilies, cacti and palm trees paint the space surrounding Majorelle's blue studio. It is a garden in which many forms, architecture and a lot of green in different tones fit. It is, above all, "a garden of graphic plants", as the French botanist who today is responsible for maintaining his legacy would say.

The Majorelle Garden, one of the essentials of Marrakech.SHUTTERSTOCK

Sorolla's garden studio (Madrid)

The people of Madrid know this orchard well, an open secret in the category of charming gardens in the middle of an asphalt jungle. The Valencian painter (we just celebrated this year the centenary of his death,) was expanding his studio-home on the Paseo del General Martínez Campos, as he was reaping successes with his painting. From its three adjoining studios, with high ceilings and abundant light, you can access one of the gardens that draws the property in the center of the capital. The painter of light made his garden another of his works: he designed its layout, chose the species and like Monet and O'Keeffe made it one of the favorite subjects of his art in the last years of his life.

The Sorolla Museum, Madrid.SHUTTERSTOCK

The Blue House of Frida Khalo (Mexico City)

Coyoacán, the bohemian neighborhood of Mexico City, was in the mid-twentieth century something like New York's Greenwich Village, a magnet for interesting people, artists from all over who came to commune with their Mexican brothers. Frida Khalo and Diego Rivera received at the Blue House, the most famous residence in Coyoacán, the place where she spent much of her life and died. With the arrival of Leon Trotsky, who lived with them for a while, they took over more land and planted the lush garden to have more privacy. In it Frida collected a great variety of cacti and other Mexican plant species that are easily identifiable in her paintings. Here you can take a virtual tour of the Blue House.

La Casa azul, Mexico City. SHUTTERSTOCK

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