How and why to uplight your garden

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If you have a beautiful garden that either just disappears into the darkness at night or (worse still!) is lit up like a stadium, you should consider uplighting.

I visited the fanciest resort here in Phoenix when I started considering lighting my garden. I knew that I didn't want "stadium lighting", but I also wanted to make the area safe for people to enjoy at night. Glaring lights, or lights that blink on and off, just give me a headache to think about. And so I figured out how to do uplighting, with spotlights.

Uplighting means that the light is pointed away from people, and towards the plants, and walls. Done correctly, it makes the plants look fabulous, as if you were in a resort, and the light bounces back gently giving people enough light to see to walk. I'm a graphic designer, and a believer that a design can be both practical and beautiful. If you want to see proof, visit any resort. They have to be beautiful, of course, but they also have to be safe. A resort can't have a glaring light that blinds someone who walks out onto the patio. Nor can it have areas that are so dark that guests need to bring along a flashlight along with their gin-and-tonic. Yes, it's an art form.

The spotlights that work best in my little garden are LED 20 Watt equivalent. At first I had a few path lights, but eventually I got rid of them, and now have only spotlights.

And while 20 watts doesn't sound very bright in a lamp in your house, it's plenty bright for outdoors. In fact, you have to be very careful to not point them towards where anyone will be looking, like at your neighbor's window. They should be pointed at the plants (the best uplighting is on palm trees and cycads), and splash against the wall. If you don't have a safe place for the light to land, don't do it. It's all about the gentle splash back.

I just finished installing another spotlight. I was sitting outside last night, drinking a beer, and I was pondering a particular area that I saw could use some light. It had been a blank area a couple of years ago, but now there are plants, and I want to see them. It's not even noon right now, so I have some time to wait to see the effect tonight. It's a trial-and-error thing, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I think this is going to work! I'll let you know how it goes.

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