Lavish Landscapes

Tying It All Together

Lighting can connect all the elements of your landscape design. “When it comes to landscape lighting, we don’t want to create runways. We want to softly light the house and landscape,” Koller says. “We’re doing more uplighting and downlighting of trees but fewer path lights.”

Although the ongoing trend for outdoor lighting has been to hide the source, Sweeney sees a comeback of the gas lantern, often made out of glass, copper, or bronze. “It gives you the interest of fire with its flicker, movement, and illumination, and you get the interest of the lantern that might have the appeal of days gone by.”

Most of all, lighting is one more element that allows us to extend our time outdoors. “It adds a fifth season to the landscape,” Trenary says. “In the winter months, it’s dark for a long time. When you introduce lighting, you’re getting much more use out of that landscaping. The effects of snow in the light can be breathtaking, too.”

Regardless of what components you choose for your landscaping and how you light them, most designers make an effort to ensure that the grounds match the home’s architecture. If you have a Tudor-style home, consider a combination of upright evergreens, Messer suggests. For a modern home with clean lines, try sparse plantings with staggered, square pavers on the walkways.

That’s not to say that every landscaping feature needs to match. “You can walk from area to area, and the styling of different spaces might elicit an entirely different emotion, but the underpinning of materials work in concert,” Sweeney says. “Otherwise, it looks like a menagerie of junk.”