MENUYour garden/landscape is a 24/7 attraction in your yard. Are you getting the most enjoyment from it? You don’t have to look out the window to a black abyss after dark, you can look out to a beautifully illuminated garden. Better yet, go outside and enjoy your garden on warm summer evenings.Garden lighting can make your garden even more attractive at night than during the day. Depending on what kind of lights you have and where they are aimed, you can get a whole new perspective on your garden at night.Many people work late these days and have little time to enjoy an unlighted garden. It is nice to enjoy late dinners on the patio or in the garden. Besides the pleasure of a garden-side dinner, this is an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of your weekend gardening tasks all week long.Are you perplexed about what style lights you want, or the installation details? There are many different lighting options available. The most basic are the solar-powered lights that are sold in garden centers and big box stores. These may be a good place to start. Solar-powered lights are inexpensive and easy to install. You just stick them in the ground.A lighted garden may be difficult to visualize without actually seeing your garden illuminated. Solar lights may be a good choice for you to start with. You can move them about to create different effects. They are inexpensive, so you can buy several sets and experiment. However, these lights are not very long lived, so they will need replacement in a year or two.Low voltage lighting is a good upgrade from solar-powered lighting. These lights use house power and are connected by wires, which are buried just under the soil surface. This makes them less portable than solar-power lights, and is why we recommend solar- powered lights to help you visualize the layout before going to the trouble to bury wires.You may want to combine full voltage accent lights, such spots, with low voltage lamps to outline paths and patio. The solar-powered lamps that you used in the design phase may even be incorporated into the final design in some way.If you are having a new landscape or a landscape renovation done this season, ask your designer to include lighting. Even if you aren’t renovating your landscape, you can have one of our landscape designers design the lighting and our field crew do the installation. You can let your creative juices flow and design your own lighting scheme. Any way you do it, the added hours in your garden with be good for you.
