Get the value of your Monet! Former clay quarry in Dorset has been converted into a stunning replica of French Impressionist masterpiece The Water Lily Pond
- Claude Monet’s The Water Lily Pond is recreated in Weymouth, Dorset
- In 1999, the family that owns the gardens decided to build the Japanese Bridge
Each year, thousands make the pilgrimage to Claude Monet’s home in northern France or to the Parisian museums where his artwork hangs.
But now the setting of the Impressionist’s idyllic lily pond paintings – at his house in Giverny – has been recreated in Dorset.
Busloads of visitors turn up during the blooming season to marvel at the colorful replica in a former clay quarry in Weymouth, which became Bennetts Water Gardens 64 years ago.
Isla, the 19-year-old great-granddaughter of founder Norman Bennett, is the fourth generation of the family to work on the eight-acre property, which is also the National Plant Collection of Water Lilies with more than 300 varieties.
In 1999, the family decided to build a replica of the famous Japanese bridge in the garden.
Founder Norman Bennett’s great-granddaughter, Isla (pictured), 19, is the fourth generation of the family to work the eight-acre property
The family decided to build a replica of the famous Japanese bridge in the garden in 1999 (pictured)
Isla helps run the shop while her father James, 44, looks after the lilies, and his parents Angie, 72, and her husband Jonathan, 73, own the site.
Angie Bennett said, ‘We’re getting great response. People say it’s great because it’s so much like the real thing – but without the crowds.’
Jonathan grows the same types of lilies in the pond as in Monet’s garden.
But there’s one thing he can’t quite match: the old weeping willow that stands on one side of the bridge is on the other side of the original.
Railway sleepers connected the two shores of the lake until the Bennetts decided to open the new bridge in 1999, which led to a doubling of visitors.
Now some 25,000 come each year, while Monet’s own garden attracts 500,000.
In 2014, the Radio Times accidentally featured the Dorset version in a travel promotion to visit the lily pond at Giverny.
Monet immortalized the scene in a series of 18 paintings over a 20-year period from 1899. He died in 1926.
In 2018, a water lily painting from the collection of American investment banker David Rockefeller sold at auction in New York for $84.7 million (£66.1 million).