Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:14 — 757.5KB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Blubrry | RSS | More
Garden Lighting
How to get the most advantage from simple garden lighting
A savvy home-owner uses garden lighting to his or her advantage. There are several aspects that this can take, but in this article, I will only look at what I consider to be the most important.
Let’s take beauty first, although it is the less important. Garden illumination can be used to really show off your fish pond and favourite plants. However, it is best not to use lights to display night-flowering species, as it might affect their cycle. Nevertheless, it is fantastic for many species of flora.
Bushes and Plants
Garden lights should be used to highlight the spectacular plants, which do not close at night
This means that the lighting should be seasonal. This is very easy to achieve nowadays by using solar-powered module lighting. Solar-powered modular lights are basically solar-powered lights on a stick, that you can pick up and put wherever, or whenever it is convenient.
In other word, you could highlight a rose in summer, then move the light to highlight a Jasmine in the winter.
Fish Pond
Garden lights are also spectacular when used in combination with a fish pond. Fountains and waterfalls looks so much better when illuminated, even if you judge that your fish deserve a break from the lights. You can use a timer to regulate this. Bear it in mind though that your fish pond lights will attract insects, which will provide natural protein for your pets. Be careful that you do not superimpose your judgements on your fish. If you provide sufficient overhead cover, then your fish will be ale to rest whenever they like, and feel safe from aerial attack.
Security
However, the most important thing about garden lighting, as far as humans are concerned, is the added security that it provides to your garden items, your home and to you and your family.
Motion-activated lighting is a fantastic deterrent to would-be thieves!
Imagine the shock of being caught in a floodlight as they are running across your lawn, and they can hear an alarm sounding within the house!
The ultimate scenario is to combine decorative garden lights with motion-sensitive security lighting. So, you could have the decorative garden light system switch off by timer at say 8pm, and the security lighting motion-sensitive system take over after that.
You can get my ebook or audiobook on how to use lighting effectively in your garden here:
on our sister blog