This French garden inspired some of the world's most famous paintings
The site has expanded in the century since Latour-Marliac died in 1911, and is now owned by a French-American businessman and university professor, Robert Sheldon. Rows of rectangular basins dug into the earth, home to a total of 250 varieties of water lilies, fill out land that during Latour-Marliac's time were fields.
The ponds are also home to eight species of frogs, and it's their song that provides the soundtrack – and their movements much entertainment – as I walk around the garden after a light lunch of paté and salad under the shade of vine leaves in the on-site restaurant. Beyond the colourful ponds, a path threads through a shaded forest of bamboo, Latour-Marliac's first horticultural passion.
The nursery opens to visitors at the beginning of May, when the first water lilies burst into bloom, but it's at its most dazzling between June and September when the tropical water lily ponds, lotus and the Victoria Amazonica, the species with such wide and perfectly formed round leaves they look like floating tarte dishes, flower in a hot and humid greenhouse. It closes again to the public at the end of September.
Latour-Marliac's Napoleon-era family residence, a five-minute walk away, is a more evergreen destination in the village. After shuttering like a time capsule not long after he died, the house opened for the first time last summer to the public as the Maison-Musee Latour-Marliac, and still preserves much of its turn-of-the-century feel.
The new owner, landscape architect Thierry Huau, whose workshop is on rue Claude Monet in Giverny, has styled each room like a whimsical cabinet of curiosities to trace how plants have influenced art, using cutting-edge visual technologies to make the narrative pop.
With these two attractions, the unlikely village of Le Temple-sur-Lot has woven itself into the Monet story – and what a delightful chapter it is.
The details
Visit
Latour-Marliac in Le Temple-sur-Lot is open Tuesday-Sunday from May 1 to September 30. Entrance is €9 ($16), children under 12 free. Maison-Musee Latour-Marliac is open daily from May 1 to September 30 and from Friday to Sunday between March 21 and April 30 and October 1 and November 16. Entrance is €8 ($12.50), children under 12 free. See shop.latour-marliac.com; nympheas.info; tourisme-lotetgaronne.com
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