Landscape Lighting

As I recently read in a Southern Living article, "We've all taken evening drives and noted the aesthetic pleasures of a well-lit house. Outdoor lighting accents the home and adds life to a nighttime landscape." Outdoor lighting has become one of the more popular trends in landscape upgrades. Homeowners and designers alike have come to appreciate the affect that thoughtful landscape lighting can have on a home. Landscape lighting allows you to enjoy the view of your home and landscape throughout the evening. Lighting systems illuminate your property, giving you the ability to appreciate the seasonal interests of your home and plant material. This is true both in the winter and in the summer. In the winter when it gets dark early you can enjoy the view of your home and landscape through the evening, and few things are more striking than an up lit tree draped in snow. During the summer months landscape lighting allows you to entertain outside late into the evening. Thoughtful landscape lighting consists of much more than a row of path lights bordering your drive, making it look like a runway. We are not trying to create daylight at night and homeowners are often surprised at how few fixtures are required to transform their nighttime landscape. Good systems accentuate the architectural features of a home, the beauty of the landscape and promotes safety. A well designed landscape lighting system consists of a mix of path lights, up lights and moon lights. Each light creates a particular effect and it is the mix of all three which produces the best outcome. The systems are not complex, however it is important to invest in a high quality product such as LumaStream or Cast Lighting. The systems available at home centers are very inexpensive, however it is an example of, you get what you pay for. Both LED and traditional (incandescent) systems run off of transformers which tie into your home's electrical system. From that transformer we install a series of wires which run to each of the light fixtures. The advantage of the traditional (incandescent) system is that they are about 20% less expensive to install. The advantage of the LED systems is that they are exponentially less expensive to run and they do not require the routine replacement of bulbs. An LED bulb will run for approximately 21 years at 8 hours a day, all while drawing a fraction of the electricity used by traditional lights. Up until recently, traditional lighting systems had been the mainstay of outdoor lighting due to the warm light color they produce, however with the advancements in LED technology, high quality LED fixtures produce the same warm colors found in traditional lighting systems. 

Give us a call or request a consultation and we'd be happy to meet with you and discuss landscape lighting. 

 http://www.cast-lighting.com/homeowners/

http://www.lumastream.com/

http://www.southernliving.com/home-garden/solutions/outdoor-lighting-00400000008815/

Why do seating walls work?

In the last few years, seating walls have become one of the more popular landscape elements. They have even out-performed the wave of popularity enjoyed by all stone work. We believe seating walls have become popular for a number of reasons, first and most obviously, they provide additional seating space to outdoor living rooms. They also create a sense of coziness on a patio by distinguishing it from the rest of the back yard. While only 18 inches tall, seating walls create a significant amount of enclosure. These walls also give you the ability to repeat materials found in other vertical elements of your hardscapes. For instance, if you had a paver patio with a set of building stone and flagstone steps leading into the house, when we use the matching building stone and flagstone for the seating wall, it acts to visually unify the space. As outdoor living spaces have become more elegant, the use of seating walls is a natural extension of this trend. These walls tend to mirror the architecture of the house with similar geometry. Professionally designed patios and seating walls have truly become outdoor living rooms with the materials and furnishings rivaling that of the house.

Below are some pictures of seating walls which were designed and installed by O’Grady’s Landscape. You’ll see that they can be used in a lot of different environments, each of them adding to the overall feel of the project.

MD building stone seating wall with flagstone cap

MD building seating stone wall with flagstone cap

MD building stone seating wall with flagstone cap.

West Virginia stone seating wall with flagstone cap

West Virginia stone seating wall with flagstone cap

PA field stone wall with flagstone cap

West Virginia stone seating wall with flagstone cap