Garden design, garden planning, garden layout, planting plants and planting schemes

LED garden lights – nice and bright

Posted on August 6th, 2010

LED  garden lights offer an easy and cost effective means to add impressive drama into your garden. LED lights are an ideal way to light up your favourite plants or garden feature. There are several advantages to using LED garden lights including long life (50,00-60,000+ hours), low energy and therefore low running cost (the lights featured in these photos are rated 3W). Other advantages include no flicker, no heat generated and easily recycled. Good for your garden, good for your pocket and certainly good for the environment. Surely an all round win?

The lighting featured here is mains operated (no transformer) GU 10 3W Garden Spike Spot which can be used as an Uplighter (under the Bamboo planting) or as a Targeted light (illuminate the Water Feature).     

LED Ground Lights for your garden

Posted on July 24th, 2010

Ground lighting creates interesting uplighting effects of topiary style planting

A simple, cost effective, energy efficient and hugely impressive means of illuminating garden planting during darkness can be achieved by installing LED Ground lights. Available in a range of sizes and generally low wattage (2W – 18W), GU10 3W LED Groundlights is all that one requires to light up most plants/shrubs. Note trees will require higher wattage, eg 18W. But for most applications the lower rating ground lights will be very effective. LED lamps are also available in a range of colours including white, yellow, green, red and now also automatic colour changers which feature several colour changes within the individual lamp. White is probably best and most popular but occasionally a yellow lamp might also be interesting when used with low growing plants or under the more delicate delicate translucent foliage of ferns, grasses and bamboos.

Ground lighting is a terrific way to highlight your favourite plants/trees in your garden and thanks to LED efficient technology, your LED lighting will provide thousands (typically 30,000-40,000+ ) hours of beautiful low energy enjoyment. 

Lighting adds drama to any planting scheme

Trees come alive with lighting

Feature trees by day become bigger features by uplighting

Lighting reveals another dimension to the garden

Lighting can help create atmosphere amongst the Planting

Garden Lighting can be an intriguing way to lead the eye

Garden Lighting – more LED, more lightwise

Posted on July 23rd, 2010

Most readers will be familiar with the energy efficiency and long working life of LED lighting. But as these photos from a recent project clearly illustrate, LED lighting is also more than capable of producing very impresssive lighting results in the garden. The lighting featured in the photos ranged from 3W – 18W. Whether you wish to uplight a specimen plant, water feature or a wall, be more lightwise and let LED do it.

Bright LED Garden lighting

Posted on August 27th, 2009

I was amazed with the huge interest in our recent blog  http://www.owenchubblandscapers.com/news/entry/led-garden-lighting-a-bright-white-wonder/ on the super bright LED garden light. I received many enquiries from gardeners including some from overseas seeking more information on these fantastic LED lights but also about suitable GU10 type fittings to use with the LED  lights.

Light fitting with garden spike/peg attached.

So here is some more details on the actual light fitting. manufactured in Italy, it is double insulated, so does not need to be earthed and it comes pre-wired with approx 1 m of cable. Suitable for outdoor or indoor use, the body is very robust and made from plastic (hexamethyldiamine polyamide) which is heat resistant. There is no risk of burning on accidentally touching the plastic casing. It is also inflammable and shatter-proof. It does not rust or corrode, and is stable in adverse weather conditions and UV rays. The product comes with a garden peg or spike for securing in the ground for lighting around plants. The light can be directed very easily, simply adjust and tighten the wing nut to to the desired angle. Also included is a bracket for fixing to hard surfaces such as decking, walls, raised beds etc.  

A range of lamps can be used with this light fitting including GU10, GU10CFL and of course GU10LED. Take my word, when used with the super 3WGU10LED, it will be very hard to find a better,  longer lasting and very affordable garden light.

LED Garden Lighting- a bright white wonder.

Posted on July 22nd, 2009

Many gardeners I know have been patiently waiting for a real low energy alternative to providing good practical lighting performance in the garden. For some time, the CFL lamps have been leading the charge (mainly in Bollard style lighting) with LED a poor second and solar a very poor distant third.

Traditionally, some LED producers claims of high output values have always been influenced by marketing speak and the results frequently disappointing but not any more. A new LED wonder has now become available and we recently completed a landscaping project in which for the very first time all the garden lights installed were fitted with LED lamps. In this particular case, the fittings were all fitted with the latest 3 Watt GU 10 LED lamps. But these are no ordinary LED lamps. No, here we can genuinely talk about a high light output that is comparable to the  light output of a standard GU 10 50W lamp. The light provided is best described as ’warm  white’ which is much more popular and softer light than the typical LED ‘cool white’ light which for some people can appear to be a bit harsh or clinical looking. This new little LED wonder is certain not to disappoint?

Appropriately named Greenlamp, this latest and delightful piece of LED technology with it’s 3 Watt rating and performance is incredibly a low energy user. It can be installed in any regular mains GU 10 fitting so no need to worry about transformer, has a staggering working LED life of over 50,000 hours (which is more than x 50 longer than the life of the standard GU 10 lamp , no UV radiation and is without question the ideal long life and low energy lighting solution not just for garden areas but also throughout the house including kitchen, living and bathroom areas. In fact any where there is a GU 10 50W lamp you can reduce your electricity usage costs by over 90% by switching and replacing existing lamps with this wonderful new 3 W GU 10 LED. 

We are now using these powerful 3 W GU 10 LED lamps to not only illuminate Water Feature areas but also Specimen Shrubs and Trees and other planting. Even with 10 fittings in the garden, the owner in return for fantastic lighting levels, will only be using 30w of electricity. Incredible but excitingly true.

Our eco-future, demands that we be more conscious of our environment, and here is a wonderful example of fantastic innovation which is truely bright & white but with comes with eminent green credentials.

A little bright white wonder for sure which everybody will be seeing more with and for a great deal less.  Thats good news for me and you but also our shared environment.

GARDEN LIGHTING

Posted on July 4th, 2009

When it comes to selecting light fittings for your garden, design, performance and running costs must all be carefully considered. We offer a wide range of garden lighting products all used in our own landscaping project works. in fact it would be very rare that an alternative fitting would be used. We are very confident based on our own experiences and endorsed by our client satisfaction that our garden lighting range is ideal for most lighting applications including water features, specimen planting, ambient lighting, uplighting and flood lighting.

Here are a few examples from our range, mainly stainless steel but also cedar and generally our fittings are fitted with low energy lamps or LEDs, which means optimum performance and low energy consumption.

In essence we offer well designed lighting products with long  lasting excellent lighting performance and with low running costs. Our range is available from our GARDENSTUDIO in Terenure.