
DATE: Sunday, August 17, 1997               TAG: 9708180255

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: GRAYTON BEACH, FLA.               LENGTH:  192 lines

MONET CAN BUY HAPPINESSLEAVING THE WORLD OF FINANCE, FLORIDA MAN FOLLOWS HIS DREAM OF RE-CREATING THE PAINTER'S FAMED GARDENS

ALONG FLORIDA'S Panhandle, a pocket of calm exists amid the populous beachfront resorts.

There, in the tiny coastal village Grayton Beach, Jonathan Quinn has built his bliss - an oasis of quietude called Monet, Monet. Part garden shop/nursery, part homage to the French Impressionist painter, it is evidence of one man's triumph over convention.

``What's remarkable is that I did it. I actually did it,'' said Quinn, speaking on the phone from his shop.

People who knew him before, as a shy financial consultant in Kansas City, Mo., can't believe the transformation, he said. Now, he's a sensitive, New Age man on a perpetual natural high, thanks to his muse, Claude Monet.

``I'm a totally different person than I was when I started this project. Let's put it this way: I'm finding out who I am.''

And all he did was construct - on a half-acre plot, compared to Monet's four acres - a scaled-down version of the artist's sprawling pink house in Giverny, France, where he lived from 1883 until his death in 1926. Quinn also created a Gulf Coast interpretation of Monet's riotous flower gardens and his famous waterlily pond - Japanese footbridge and all.

Differences in soil and atmosphere made it impossible to use all the same plants Monet had selected for Giverny. Even though Quinn is constantly adding a mushroom compost to his very sandy soil, the environment poses limitations.

``I only used plants that would thrive in my area,'' he said. ``That's the secret to a successful garden.''

Where Monet grew tulips, Quinn has daffodils. Where Monet had cypress and spruce trees, Quinn has live oaks and palmettos.

Still, there were a number of plants both could grow, including sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, weeping willows and, notably, waterlilies.

Quinn knows that for a sophisticated colorist such as Monet, hues were a key concern in arranging his garden. The artist gave his floral fantasia a formal, geometric design, using long-stemmed and trailing blossoms to soften the edges. He erected arching trellises - including a series of six leading to his house - that lifted color into the sky.

Quinn installed four of those trellises for the grande allee leading to his pink house, too.

Monet's plan was monochromatic: Rather than mix different colored flowers, he planted sections of flowers in shades of one hue - for example, from pale pink to bright red. From overhead, the garden looked like stripes of red, pink, gold, violet and blue.

The artist was in love with his gardens, and obsessed with their upkeep. One of his six full-time gardeners spent the entire day keeping the pond and waterlilies free from dust and debris.

``I have no other wish than to mingle more closely with nature,'' Monet said, ``and I aspire to no other destiny than to work and live in harmony with her laws, as Goethe prescribed.

``Nature is greatness, power, and immortality; compared with her, a creature is nothing but a miserable atom.''

Since Monet, Monet opened in 1994, Quinn, 39, has lived upstairs in the blush pink stucco house with the teal-green shutters.

He sells decorative garden items, such as wind chimes and fountains, and regional artwork. He also carries Monet material - stationery, postcards, puzzles, books.

And he sells plants grown in his organic garden. Quinn and his staff of three use pesticide-free methods of bug and disease control, from bringing in beneficial predators such as ladybugs to ``meditating away'' maladies.

With little promotion on Quinn's part, Monet, Monet has become a tourist magnet. On Wednesday afternoons, weather permitting, Quinn gives a tour of his garden and lectures on Monet.

``And I love doing that,'' he said. ``I've always been very shy and reclusive in my life. This has thrust me out to be a very public person, which is good.''

Last week, 40 people showed up. He's addressed as few as one, and as many as 100.

People even come when it's raining.

``We could stand under umbrellas,'' pleaded one woman, visiting during a recent downpour, according to The St. Petersburg Times, a Florida newspaper that ran a story on the shop.

When Southern Accents magazine featured Monet, Monet in its January/February issue, business began to boom, Quinn said. Now, Southern Living has a story in the works, and Paris' Madame Figaro plans a fall piece.

``What a surprise,'' Quinn said, regarding the French magazine. ``But what are the French going to think about this? The reporter asked me right out: `Don't you think you're exploiting Monet?'

``I said, `No.' ''

Quinn feels he's honoring Monet. More than that, he believes he is offering a kind of spiritual retreat in keeping with Monet's art.

Most of Monet's paintings in the last quarter-century of his life focused on his gardens, especially his pond filled with waterlilies and rimmed with weeping willows and wisteria. He was fascinated with the pond as a metaphor for nature, its glassy surface so responsive to the slightest breeze or atmospheric shift.

``He found it to be very important in his life, that pond,'' Quinn said. ``He had a habit of taking a chair and sitting by the edge of the pond, and just staring at it, being still. Just staring for four hours at a time.

``Being a meditator, I can't help but think that was exactly what he was doing - connecting with that force.''

Yet in all the books he's read on the artist, none have touched on the spiritual aspect, Quinn said.

``To me, it's just everywhere. The waterlily itself is such a metaphor. That out of the muck and the darkness grows this plant, the most beautiful bloom there is.''

Some visitors thank Quinn for the spiritual environment he's created. ``It is spiritual. It always pleases me when people recognize it. I get up early in the morning, and I'll look out on the back gardens. It's not uncommon to see people sitting out there.

``And it's magic. I have beautiful music playing in the gardens and in the shop. It's much cooler in my gardens. The shade and pond and music give it the sense of being cooler. I have people who come in the morning, and just stay all day.

``Just sit and be soothed.''

Quinn has never studied art or gardening, though he's been a hobbyist gardener since age 6.

His Monet fascination began in 1989, when he attended a slide talk in Kansas City by Elizabeth Murray, a photographer who worked as a gardener at Monet's Giverny home, one of France's top tourist attractions.

``It just struck a deep chord within me,'' Quinn recalled.

He grew up in New Orleans, and his family boasts several generations of horticulturally inclined folks. Then, in the early 1990s, he moved with his wife and two kids to Grayton Beach. A divorce followed. Quinn found himself drawn to a more spiritual lifestyle.

``So, one day I was walking on the beach and I got this idea,'' he said. ``Really, a strong sensation that I needed to quit my (financial consulting) business, close it down and open up a garden patterned after Monet's.''

At that point, he had not even visited Monet's gardens. Still, he set out on the adventure. To hone his skills, he took a $6-an-hour job as a gardener at nearby Seaside, Fla. Three months later, he resigned and took off on a tour of European gardens, including Monet's.

Once at Giverny, ``I was so excited, I couldn't believe it,'' he said. ``It was so much more beautiful than I ever expected. There was literally a carpet of flowers from the ground to the sky.''

He spent four days at Giverny, measuring, photographing and noting all its aspects. When he returned, he found his half acre and went to work clearing the land. Like Monet, he dug out a pond to his specifications, though Quinn's is about one-fifth the size of Monet's.

In June 1994, he planted the first flowers. In November, he opened.

``That took a lot of courage, but I was just ripe for it,'' Quinn said. ``I like to think my biggest contribution is being an example: Here's a man who had the courage to live his dream - to take that leap, and do it.'' ILLUSTRATION: ST. PETERSBURG TIMES COLOR PHOTOS

ABOVE: A bridge arcs over the water garden at Monet Monet in Grayton

Beach, Fla.

LEFT: ...says Jonathan Quinn...

Photo

JEANNE MALMGREN

Jonathan Quinn's Monet, Monet in Grayton Beach, Fla., contains a

garden shop and nursery.

Graphics

CLOSER TO HOME

Last month, three 1880s painting by Claude Monet went on view in

the skylit Impressionist gallery at The Chrysler Museum of Art in

Norfolk.