Assessing Your Landscape Lighting- How to avoid expensive renovations

Assessing Your Landscape Lighting- How to avoid expensive renovations

By Mike Gambino,

Like every living thing, landscaping is fluid-constantly evolving, growing and changing. Nothing is frozen in time. Without proper, ongoing care, even the best designed and built landscape lighting systems will experience a slow and steady degeneration until the only remedy is complete system renovation. Even with proper care the maturing and aged landscape of 15 plus years can start to outgrow the space but things can be done to make sure that costly remodels do not need to take place before its time.

What’s needed to avoid major landscape lighting remodeling and renovation before its time is periodic, year-round assessment that enables you to see and gauge your landscape and lighting’s performance and determine what requires focused, more proactive attention and what can get along with minimal care. Take notes and night time photographs (today’s advanced smart phones are low light sensitive and can take some pretty good for observation photos) to refer back to later in the year. Use them to review progress at each new phase and season and to act as a baseline for change. Keep in mind, that you can only put off care and change for so long. If you see an issue, address it as soon as you can.

Early season assessment lets you see where there is opportunity to trim plants back or move plants around.

The key is three seasonal assessments that can help you understand what’s happening as your landscape comes back to life in the spring, actively grows and matures in the summer, and prepares for slower growth or dormancy in the fall and winter:

Early Spring (Feb/March) This is the critical first assessment of the new season, before plants are actively growing. Early spring is ideal for assessing landscape features such as bed and lawn lines because the lack of foliage due to dormant perennials and lack of leaves on certain deciduous trees enables you to clearly see the structure of your landscape. Use this time to stage structural work that can be done later in the spring and summer. Remember to take notes that you can return to during your mid- and late-season assessments.

Mid-Summer (July/August) By this time your lawn and gardens are in full swing. Plants are at the height of their growth and everything has filled in so you can clearly see any areas that have become crowded and that need to be addressed. The earlier this assessment is done, the more ability you have to schedule both summer and fall landscape work such as pruning, dividing, transplanting and adding plants to the landscape. For the lighting system-adding more lights, adjusting, repositioning, removing and redeploying certain fixtures to other areas or increasing or decreasing light brightness and or beam spreads for best effect etc.

Mid-Fall (October/November) The season is waning and plants are getting ready for their long winter’s slow down. This is when you can assess the changes over the year so you can plan corrections that can happen in the winter – such as tree removals and corrective pruning — as well as late and early season landscape lighting adjustments or repairs. Spring will be here before you know it, so now’s the perfect time to start planning for early spring season that will enable you to enjoy the outdoors as the days and nights become warmer.

When you’re actively assessing your landscape and lighting systems throughout the year, you’re able to prepare thoughtful, ongoing management that protects the original design intent while enabling you to take advantage of opportunities to make progressive improvements and adjustments. You’re better able to manage your landscape more effectively in a timely manner by staying abreast of constant and frequent changes, instead of being forced to react more aggressively and suddenly because you allowed minor failures to pile up over time, ultimately requiring significant renovation work.

A key point here is that landscapes and lighting systems do take more than just routine maintenance. Even with good maintenance, the pace of growth, and sometimes the sizes achieved, or the increasing shade and root pressure of growing and maturing trees will require that you change your landscaping. Don’t fight that too long. Be willing to invest in landscape and lighting updates that will address the environmental changes and maturing and normal aging process. This will ensure you have a landscape and lighting system with longevity.

The evolving landscape.

The properties that my company has originally design and built the lighting system on and that we provide management for that do the best are the ones for which clients have handed over the assessments to us and follow our lead when we give them the list of what needs to be done. Of course, not everything we suggest is always done, but there is a good ongoing dialogue about property needs that enables each client to make his or her decisions – good and bad – based on the insights we provide. And of course, there are the clients who just leave it all to us and I’m happy to say those properties look the best.

Where we have the most trouble is when we provide only intermittent care, usually because of budgetary constraints, and the client is relying on a gardening company, handyman or domestic helper to manage the landscape lighting in between our longer than recommended scheduled visits . What I’ve found is that these properties become incrementally harder to manage. They essentially “get away” from us until the only solution is renovation and big invoices. So what was intended to save money only in the long run costs more.

Avoid major landscape lighting renovations by periodically assessing your landscape over the growing season with an eye for spotting opportunities for small changes that will keep your lighting looking its best.

Someone – the owner or a care provider – should be doing functional landscape assessments more than once a year and making recommendations for actions over and above mulching and mowing, pruning and weeding. Regular, periodic tweaks will keep the landscape in optimal condition and functionally balanced. That can be as simple as removing a tree that is becoming overgrown and crowding a garden. It can be as complicated as removing a whole section of a garden and starting over.

So now is the time. Get out there with a notebook and a camera. Make notes, take pictures, ask your landscape lighting professional some questions about what they see. Come up with first steps, do those, then come back in mid-summer and then again in the fall and assess again. Nature is constantly evolving and so should your landscape and your lighting.

This landscape lighting blog is published by Mike Gambino of Gambino landscape lighting inc. all rights reserved. Mike is a professional landscape lighting system designer/ builder and has been designing, installing and maintaining landscape lighting systems for more than 30 years. Mike resides in the Los Angeles area with his wife and 2 sons. To visit his website go to www.Gambinolighting.com . To inquire about hiring Mike please click here .

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