Lighting up the garden

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I woke up early this morning and got nice and dirty redoing the wiring on this corner of The Tropical Paradise. It was done by 9 am, and I spent the rest of today waiting for the sun to go down to see how it looked. I am very pleased with the effect, especially the uplighting of this Euphorbia pedalanthus which was given to me by the Vice President of The Arizona Palm and Cycad Association.

 The spotlights here are 20 watts, which doesn't sound like much, but out in the garden they are brilliant. The path lights are 11 watts and they not only help illuminate the walking area, they give a nice glow to the rocks.

The whole backyard uses two 100-watt low-voltage transformers, which is the equivalent of having two bright light bulbs on in the house. I turn it on and off manually, as there is no reason to have the light burning all night in my backyard.

When I first started figuring out how to do garden lighting, I visited the premiere resort here in the Phoenix area, The Phoenician, on Camelback and 60th Street. I just wandered around there, looking at what they did. The best trick is uplighting palm trees, but it's important not to overlook path lighting, too. The spotlights also light up an area by bouncing back off of walls. And somehow, it just seems to make everything "ta-da!"

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