Landscape lighting for Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania yards

Landscape lighting is not a string of spots in the mulch. It is how the garden keeps a shape after the sun is gone. In Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, that hour is when people actually go outside. Humidity owns the afternoon. The yard earns its cost after the heat breaks.

Our outdoor and landscape lighting work treats the garden as structure: trunks, hedges, the fall of the grade, the path you walk without thinking. A floodlight makes all of that disappear. Selective light is the same idea as selective planting. You choose what has a job.

pool and patio lighting covers the pool and the patio. This note is the garden around them — and the yards that have no pool at all.

What changes from the coast to the hillside

A lot in Rehoboth Beach or Bethany Beach often wants the view left dark and the path made readable. Salt-tinged air and an open lot do not need every ornamental tree turned into a lamp. Light the walk from the house to the terrace. Let the marsh or the dune stay a silhouette.

Greenville and Hockessin are closer, shadier, and wetter in the beds. Clay holds water. Neighbors are near. Landscape light here is a trunk you can see from the kitchen and a hedge that screens a window without a glare bouncing off it. If the fixture is aimed at a leaf that moves, it will strobe all summer.

West Chester and Kennett Square sit on grade. A path that disappears down a slope is a lighting problem and a safety problem. Light the walking surface at the change in level. Do not light the whole hillside or you will own a bright lawn and a dark step.

Along the water in Elkton and North East, the temptation is to light the dock and the whole bank. The neighbor across the creek will see it. Light the walk you use. Leave the water dark unless the water is a room you sit in.

Planting and light are one specification

landscaping and hardscaping is why we will not draw the beds and then “add lights.” The hedge that screens a road is the same hedge that should read at night. If it is the wrong plant, lighting cannot rescue it. If the path is in the wrong place, the fixtures will follow a mistake.

Four seasons matter here. A landscape that only works in June has nothing to light in March. Bones first — walls, grade, evergreen structure — then the fixtures that reveal those bones.

• Evergreen structure so winter still has a shape to light
• Fixtures aimed at trunks and hedges, not at bedroom windows
• Paths and steps bright enough to walk, dim enough to sit nearby
• No plan that requires opening finished stone later for wire
• Species that can take the aim — a soft perennial is a poor target

How to start

Walk the yard at the hour you complain about. Note the step you miss, the tree you like, the window you do not want to light. That list is more useful than a fixture catalog.

Bring it to the process. We will put conduit and aim in the same drawing as the stone and the plants. Read Before the First Stone if you want the questions on paper first. Then walk the property, or call 302-234-8090.

Questions homeowners ask

What should landscape lighting actually light?

Structure. A trunk, the face of a hedge, a path, a step. Not the entire lawn, and not the neighbor’s windows.

Is landscape lighting different on the coast than inland?

Yes. Salt air, open wind, and a view you paid for in Sussex County are not the same problem as clay and close neighbors in New Castle County or a Chester County hillside.

When should the lighting plan be drawn?

With the planting and the stone. Fixtures aimed after the beds are full usually hit the wrong branch and the wrong window.