Why should garden lighting be an afterthought?

I’ve always thought it slightly strange that we spend so much time designing gardens to look beautiful during the day, only for them to disappear when it gets dark. Good garden lighting changes that. And by good lighting, I don’t mean filling a garden with as many lights as possible. In fact, quite the opposite. Some of the best garden lighting is the lighting you barely notice. You notice what it does, rather than the fitting itself. A carefully positioned light beneath a tree can completely change its character at night. The bark suddenly becomes important. Branches create shadows. Leaves catch the light and move in the slightest breeze. A wall that was simply a backdrop during the day can become part of the garden at night when light grazes across its surface. Even ornamental grasses can look completely different when they're backlit.

Lighting Extends the Garden Beyond Daylight

One of the things I think is often overlooked is that we probably spend more time looking out at our gardens than actually sitting in them.

That's particularly true during a British winter. At four o'clock on a December afternoon, the garden outside the window can become little more than a black reflection in the glass. Introduce carefully considered lighting and suddenly the garden is there again. A specimen tree illuminated at the end of the garden creates a focal point from inside the house. A softly lit pathway draws your eye through the space. Lighting amongst planting gives depth rather than illuminating everything equally. It effectively gives you the garden back for several more hours every day.

More Light Doesn't Mean Better Lighting

One of the easiest mistakes to make with garden lighting is using too much of it. A garden shouldn't look like a football pitch. Darkness is actually an important part of a lighting scheme. You need areas of shadow because that's what makes the illuminated areas interesting. I'd much rather pick out three beautiful things in a garden than try to illuminate thirty. Perhaps it's a multi-stemmed tree. Perhaps it's the texture of a stone wall. Or it might simply be a group of grasses moving in the evening breeze. The question isn't really “Where can we put a light?” It's “What do we want to see at night?” That's a very different way of approaching it.

Think About Lighting When You Design the Garden

The best time to think about garden lighting is before the garden is built. That means cables, ducts, transformers and switching can all be considered as part of the construction rather than somebody trying to work out how to get a cable beneath a newly laid patio six months later. It also means the lighting can be designed around the planting.

We know which trees will eventually form the focal points. We know where people will sit. We know which paths need subtle illumination and which views from the house are worth highlighting. Lighting becomes part of the design rather than something added afterwards.

A Garden Has Two Personalities

This is perhaps what I enjoy most about garden lighting. The garden you see at night doesn't have to be the same garden you see during the day.

During daylight, you see everything. At night, we get to choose what you see. A tree. A sculpture. The edge of a step. Light catching the surface of water. Everything else can quietly disappear into the darkness. Done properly, garden lighting isn't really about the lights at all. It's about creating another version of the garden.