Night life
Make your garden shine at night

by Kelly Bowman Greenwood

Any plant can be a focal point at night if lit correctly.

Highlighting the best features of your garden for evening is a lot like using cosmetics well: Overdoing it can defeat the purpose. At the same time, learning what your best features are and emphasizing them makes a tremendous difference in what people will focus on and how they will see the whole picture.

Night drama doesn't have to put you in competition with a Las Vegas casino. Choose a few places or items to make focal points and provide enough light to appreciate how they relate to each other.

Here's a selection of plants that make excellent candidates for a night-time lighting treatment:

Black Bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra). All bamboo should be planted in a 24-inch-deep rhizome barrier installed and sealed according to the manufacturer's directions. That said, this is not a particularly aggressive bamboo, and likes a little bit of protection from hot sun. The stalks turn an incredibly dramatic purplish-black after the first year or so in the ground. Rather than wrap each individual root ball with rhizome barrier, I always specify a long rectangle enclosing all of the plants, so that together they eventually form a green "wall" of reed-like stalks.

This is extremely effective in narrow side yards, where you don't want to spend a lot of time on maintenance but the view is important (such as from a dining room or living room). Add tumbled recycled glass mulch for a modern look or decorative pebble mulch for a more traditional Asian look.

For the finishing touch, up-light the resulting form with in-ground fixtures such as FX Luminaire's Well-Lite or Lite-Guard. To raise the drama factor even more, paint the wall or fence behind the bamboo a color that picks up on the color of the stalks -- such as warm brick red or purple.

Smooth horsetail (Equisetum hyemale). This plant can also be quite invasive in wet areas, so please be a good neighbor and always plant using a 24-inch plastic rhizome barrier. I also like to select for areas that are completely surrounded by paving for an extra measure of protection. This plant works wonderfully in some places where it's very difficult to get anything else to grow -- those funny swampy corners where your appliances are vented, for example.

In small urban gardens, these are sometimes areas that are right where you plan to entertain or hang out. It's also very easy to maintain in pots, for those condo and townhouse dwellers looking for a little balcony drama. When planting next to paving, up-light the architectural, jointed stems with a well light designed to mount flush in paving, such as FX Luminaire's Terra Elemento.

Highly architectural shapes are easy to emphasize as garden focal points. Consider multiple sources of light besides fixtures -- in this case, a fire pit.

Succulents. Try combining a dramatic succulent such as Echeveria with a drought-tolerant perennial such as the dwarf Hidcote lavender (Lavandula angustifolia 'Hidcote') in an urn. To properly light the urn, you may want to combine an accent light from below with a light in a nearby tree or mounted on the house.

Oak trees. My favorites! Sometimes it's best to know when not to plant, and that's often the case under our native oaks. A dramatic solution is to surround it with tumbled glass mulch or gravel and up-light it. If you are treating a heritage oak for crown rot or if it is in your driveway or parking area, this is also a great solution. This puts all of the focus on the gorgeous alligator-skin bark and crooked branches of your Valley Oak, or the soft leaf pattern of your Coast Live Oak.

In addition to up-lighting the trunk, be sure to mount some lights among the branches, aimed to shine through the canopy and project shadow patterns of leaves or branches on your driveway, patio or paths for a soft, romantic "moonlight" effect.

Palms or any small trees with fabulous bare branches in winter (see "Dare to Be Bare" in Home & Garden Design, December 2005 for suggestions.) Consider how the plants you choose to highlight will change over time, through growth and seasonal change. Be sure to use adjustable fixtures in locations where shrubs will grow up around them, or where the tree or plant you're lighting will increase in size.

Try before you buy. To get the best sense of what will work wonderfully in your own garden, arrange a night demo with a professional contractor. An experienced contractor can bring a portable "demo kit" to your house at dusk, with fixtures attached to long cords that can be moved around to your heart's desire. Plug in the kit and presto! A preview of your new garden lighting scheme. Once you've settled on the number and placement of fixtures, the contractor can return and install the real fixtures during the daylight hours.

Don't forget to throw an evening barbecue to show off your garden's new look!

The focus of a path light should be to illuminate the path or the plant material around it, not itself. The less you see the fixture, the more you will see the garden.

Kelly Bowman Greenwood is principal of Greenwood Landscape Design and a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. Visit her Web site at www.kellygreenwood.com.