Proper installation of garden lights in water features
Nothing accents the beauty of a garden like a fountain or koi pond. But if we don’t properly light our water features, they become nothing more than noise in the dark once the sun goes down. Thankfully ,installing garden lighting into your pond or fountain is easy if you keep a few things in mind:
- The most important thing to remember when lighitng your fountain or pond is to install the lighting when you install the feature. retrofitting is always more difficult, and often leads to leaks.
- For the best effect, make sure that the light source is not visible.
- Make sure your water feature is appropriate for lighting – if the water is usually cloudy, all you are going to do is light up a bunch of mud and tadpole poop.
- Take into account the direction from which most of your visitors will be looking at the feature. This can lead to simple solutions for concealing your fixtures.
- Maybe you don’t want to light up the feature at all….
If you have a small pond, and there is a large tree on the far side from where you normally stand, consider actually removing the lighting from that section of the pond and its surroundings. Instead, light the tree, with the lamp firing upwards from the ground near the base. What you will get is a dramatic effect – the lit tree will be reflected in the surface of the pond, while the surrounding water will look black as night.
This is a great solution as well if the water is murky. If you don’t have a tree to highlight, consider doing a planting, or use your garden lights to highlight an interesting piece of sculpture.
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