Garden Lighting

Why limit your enjoyment of the garden to the daylight hours only? Well designed lighting can bring the garden life at might, with added drama and glamour to a garden. Of course, appropriate outdoor lighting can have safety and security benefits, too.

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Includes general garden illumination, pool lighting, patio lighting, spotlights, low voltage lights, solar powered lights, fairy lights, outdoor coloured bulbs, shed lights etc. Also outdoor home security such as sensor lights and security cameras.

News

Sleepless in the Suburbs

Landscape lighting can affect the flowering cycle of some plants, but may disrupt the sleep of birds, too. Researchers at La Trobe University and University of Melbourne looked at various aspects of sleep such as duration, fragmentation and REM in two bird species and found exposure to light at intensities comparable to street lighting had negative impacts. In humans, it's been shown that reducing the amount of blue-wavelengths can reduce the effects of electronic screens on sleep. Similarly, it was found that magpies did suffer more with blue-rich white light than with amber light. However, white and amber light were equally bad for the domestic pigeons tested, showing that species vary in their reaction and simply changing the light colour is probably not a general solution. Although wild birds can potentially avoid brightly-lit areas, the researchers suggest you only use outdoor lighting when and where it's really needed, eliminating purely decorative lighting and using sensor lighting for safety and security. They also recommend street and park lights be directed downwards and shielded as much as possible. Source: Artificial light keeps birds up at night (July 2020).

Pollinators deterred by street lights

There has been a lot of concern about the decline of bees worldwide, but many pollinating insects operate at night. Experiments in a Swiss meadows showed that illumination simulating street lighting reduced pollination visits by 62%. One of the plant species (Cirsium oleraceum), which is visited by insects both day and night, exhibited 13% lower fruit set. this shows that showing that daytime pollination can't compensate even if the species is capable. These findings could have environmental and agricultural implications as residential areas expand worldwide. Source: Light pollution as a new threat to pollination (August, 2017)

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