Lighting your garden

-
Before I put lighting in my garden, I visited some fancy resorts here in the Phoenix area. I wandered around The Phoenician especially, making note of how they used light to show off their tropical plants.

Here at the Tropical Paradise, I use ordinary low-voltage Malibu lights, the kind you can get from Home Depot. They can be installed by someone like me, no need for an electrical expert, and like everything else in the garden, I experiment and refine (which is a nice way of saying that when I get it wrong I try again).

What I have discovered looks best is uplighting. If you have small palm trees, or cycads, like these, uplighting looks great. I also have a few "path lights" - although they really aren't along a path, they just give a nice soft circle of light. The spotlights are 20 watts and the path lights are 11.

I have a small backyard and all of the lights run on two 100-watt transformers. In other words, I light up my whole backyard for the equivalent of two 100-watt light bulbs. A little bit goes a long way out in the garden at night! And I have an ordinary on-off switch, as I don't keep the lights on all night.

If you want to do this, here are some guidelines:

• Watch where you point the lights. Be sure that you have a wall that's tall enough for the light to bounce off. Do not blast these lights into your neighbor's yard, or at their house. As you can see in the photo, I have six-foot block walls and none of the lights point up towards a neighbor.

• Don't rely on garden lighting for your patio. This is background stuff. For the patio, have lights so that people can see. Take a look at how it's done at resorts. They don't want you stepping into the pool accidentally. So lighting can be functional and look great.

• Don't add too many lights. You aren't lighting up a stadium here. If you have confused garden lighting with the light needed to see your way around on your patio, see the paragraph above. Garden lighting should be subtle and soft, never dazzling. This isn't a disco.

On a beautiful Arizona night like this, gardening lighting is just the right touch. Just like at the fancy resorts, but no room service.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to tell if your cycad (sago palm) is alive or dead

-
Image
Cycads are strange plants. They're beautiful, and look like small palm trees, or large ferns. They grow very slowly, and can be very expensive, even common ones like "sago palms". But sago palms, in spite of their common name, aren't palms at all. They belong to a group of plants called cycads. They are wonderfully weird, and grow in strange ways. And sometimes they lose all of their leaves. Of course, if it were a palm tree that lost all of its leaves, you would know that the plant was dead. But it's not true of cycads. So don't dig that cycad up and throw it away! Not yet. If you've recently transplanted a cycad, and the leaves have all faded away, hang on. Take a look at the top center of the plant, at what I call "the pucker". There you will see some stubby, soft fronds, no more than an half-inch or so. At least that's what you should see. That means that the plant is still alive, and has dropped its leaves to focus on building r...
Read more

Rooting sago palm pups for more plants

-
Image
Once a sago palm ( cycas revoluta ) reaches a certain level of maturity, it starts to create pups. Like agaves, these are little plants that are exactly the same as the parent plant, only smaller. And yes, you can trim them off and grow them into new plants. This is how to do it. Cut them off from the parent plant with a sharp knife. If there are any roots at the bottom, try to save them, but chances are there won't be any. That's not a problem. The next step is rooting them. Douse the cut part and the bottom of the plant with some garden sulfur and some rooting hormone powder. Rooting hormone powder is pretty easy to find at your local Home Depot. I had to go to a real nursery to get garden sulfur. Anyway, the idea is to keep the little plant from rotting while giving it time to grow its own roots. Sago palm pups being rooted Bury them fairly deep in some free-draining mix. It should include volcanic pumice, if you can find it, and if not, you can use perlite. I ...
Read more

Growing sunflowers from Pennsylvania in Arizona

-
Image
It's October 21st, and I just received some sunflower seeds from a friend in Pennsylvania. Their season is ending and the season for planting here in Arizona is just beginning, and I'm kinda wondering if the seeds are wondering what's going on? It's spring again already? If you're new to the Phoenix, Arizona area, and are from back east it must seem kinda strange that fall and winter is our flower season, but it is. By springtime it will start to get so hot here that the flowers will die, and of course back east the season is just beginning.  Sunflowers growing in Peoria, Arizona, about a mile from where I live I've seen sunflowers blooming around my neighborhood of Glendale, which is a suburb of Phoenix, in the winter, and although I've never grown them I understand that they're easy to grow. I guess I'll find out - I learn best by doing! The seeds arrived safely, and it's my understanding that they were still connected to the spent flower (I do...
Read more