Brian Minter: Proper lighting can make gardens come alive in the evening
Credit to Author: Tracey Tufnail| Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2019 19:00:02 +0000
A Parisian-style garden, with limited plant palette but atmospheric lighting and seating, is surrounded by privacy fencing and forms an inviting corner of the backyard.
During our darkest, coldest months of the year, it’s quite uplifting to see so many homes using LED lighting to celebrate this festive Christmas season. However, when New Year’s celebrations are over, most lights come down, and we’re back to the long, dark evenings of the winter solstice.
With today’s LED technology and low energy consumption, I’m quite surprised that more folks are not taking advantage of the diversity of today’s lighting products to make their gardens come alive with a whole new perspective in the evening.
To get a little more background information on landscape lighting, I contacted Harvey Wagner, the sales and marketing manager of Light Resource in Burnaby. This company works mostly with landscape architects and garden designers to supply and install both home and commercial lighting.
Here are some tips to keep in mind when planning lighting for your garden.
• There are lots of considerations. You must ask yourself: What do I want to showcase … trees, a special garden feature like water, a particularly unique building or perhaps some stunning garden art? Maybe it’s a pathway or driveway that needs small dots of light for both safety and beauty. The important thing is not to over-light or over-populate your garden with luminaires, which is a more descriptive term for light fixtures.
• Work with an experienced landscape architect or designer who can help identify the many ways to bring an evening garden to life. Although it may be nice to put lights on trees at this time of year, it can seem a little kitsch when there are so many opportunities to feature trees that most of us, without the benefit of an experienced eye, just don’t see.
• Consider your neighbours and the neighbourhood. Don’t install ‘glare bombs’ or high intensity globes of light that over illuminate without creating the subtleties of highlighting individual trees and the uniqueness of your garden design. From a neighbour’s point of view, lighting should be very subtle and discreet. It should be like sharing a unique piece of art.
• Landscape lighting is an art form, and it’s about creating a beautiful effect by focusing on key elements of a garden. What you see during the day can have an entirely different aspect at night. Accent your key features while at the same time emphasizing different shapes and sizes.
• The selection of luminaires today is quite extensive, and the effects they can create are amazing. Lighting can be installed to focus from the ground up or suspended in a catenary fashion where they shine downward. Different sized beams can feature broad swaths or zero in with a narrower focus. It’s really a technique of sculpting with light.
• Colour is also important. Various colours of lights can produce interesting artistic visuals.
• Creating different looks for different seasons — for example, with leaves or without leaves — is another way to go.
• All your lighting should be on timers so, when you retire for the evening, the lights go off.
• With today’s LED technology, the new lights, with normal usage, should last about 25 to 30 years, and there is very little maintenance. In the days of incandescent lamps, one advantage was they would melt snow. LED lights, however, will not. So, during times of snow, the look will not be the same.
• With today’s low voltage transformers, outdoor lighting is very safe, and total energy consumption is significantly reduced. Therefore, the environmental impact is also low. It is important that a schematic drawing is prepared at the time of installation so that wires are not disturbed or accidentally cut during regular maintenance or during any future garden renovations.
It was great to speak with a professional like Harvey Wagner and get some lighting tips to maximize the beauty of our gardens. Garden lighting is not only beautiful during the long nights of late fall and winter, but it is also wonderful to enjoy when sitting out on a patio on warm summer evenings. Wagner said that landscape lighting is growing in popularity because it offers so many opportunities to create stunning nighttime gardens. When you can extend the hours of enjoyment in your garden this easily, it’s not hard to understand why.