Hi I am starting to design my front yard lighting but am not sure what to use on a large maple tree (well lighting from the ground or lights placed up in the tree facing down) Any help would be great thanks Sean
Hi Sean, Thanks for your question. I love illuminating trees - especially large ones. There are many ways to do it, and many effects that can be achieved. I suggest you first clarify how you want this large tree to appear. It can be minimally illuminated - just 2 or 3 lights to reveal the trunk and the primary parts of the lower branches. The risk with that approach is that after dark, a partially illuminated tree looks misshapen - sometimes a little scary. A better approach would be to aim for at least partial illumination of the entire canopy (not so easy with a big maple). You start with a spotlight installed near the base of the tree and illuminate the trunk from as close to the ground as possible. If the trunk is wide, then I would use two spotlights near the base at 60º angles from each other (leave one third of the trunk dark). From there, you should move outward and find positions that graze the lower branches. Choose very wide beam angles (and high lumen outputs) to illuminate parts of the canopy out to its very edges. The aim is to reveal the entire shape of the tree. The number of fixtures required to do this? That's up to you. I've seen large maples illuminated beautifully with as few as 3 and as many as 12 fixtures. With this type of job, I would purchase the fixtures, and connect them to power with enough wire so you can move them around and test different locations - before you dig trenches and bury the wire. For more details, please check out the tree section in How to Select Spotlights for Your Landscape Lighting Project. Enjoy! And, send us pics of the finished project!
Thanks for the reply. I was thinking 3 well lights about 5' out from trunk so that there is light all the way up the trunk. Then I was thinking of placing a few lights inside the tree. Not sure how this would look? Also I am in Ontario Canada and wondered how the well lights would handle snow all winter. I suspect that since they would be running LED and probably give off no heat that the well lights would get covered in snow. Is this a concern for the integrity of the light?
Hi Sean, You'll need at least one light about 1 ft. from trunk so you can graze it with light - that light should be stake-mounted because it will probably be among the roots (unless you have a really deep planting bed). 5 ft. out should be good for the others. Re: putting lights in the trees (pointing upwards), that works well to illuminate up to the top of the tree. Again, I would experiment with location. Best to hide them from viewers as much as possible. I suggest our woodsmen series for that. The challenge with lighting a tree from the ground and from inside the tree is uniformity of light levels. The ground lights will project fairly even levels of illumination at each level of the tree since they all project from an equal distance. For example, when all the lights are in the ground, the branches at 10 ft. will have 'x' footcandles; at 20 ft. they will 'y' footcandles and so on - that's a very natural-looking illumination. If you then add lights that are 15 ft. up inside the tree, you will see very bright illumination just above those lights - and much dimmer illumination just below those lights. The viewer will be distracted if they see these hot spots high in the tree. You can correct for this by using lower wattage lights up in the tree, or (even better) add a diffusion filter to those lights - that diminishes brightness and spreads the light in all directions. As for snow, it will melt on these fixtures - they don't get as hot as incandescent lights, but they get warm enough to melt snow (under most weather conditions). If you get a really heavy snowfall, it's possible the snow will cover the fixtures - in which case you might need to shovel a bit.
