Almost everybody buys garden lighting in May, and May is the worst month to install it.
This is the most useful thing we can tell you, and it is worth about a weekend of your time and a fair amount of your planting.
The argument, in one paragraph
A cable run through bare winter borders takes an afternoon. The same run through full May planting takes a weekend, and you damage the planting doing it. In January the ground is soft, the borders are empty, you can see exactly where the edges are, and there is nothing in the way. In May the ground is dry and hard, the borders are three feet deep in growth, and every spade goes through something's roots.
Install in the winter and the garden lights itself the following spring, with no scars.
Six reasons, in order of how much they matter
- Bare borders. You can see the soil, reach the back of the bed, and lay cable along the edge where it belongs. In summer you are working blind through foliage.
- Soft ground. Winter soil digs. August clay does not, and a trench you have to fight is a trench you make shallower than you meant to.
- No root damage. Herbaceous planting is dormant and below ground. Cutting a trench past a dormant crown is survivable; cutting through it in full growth often isn't.
- You can see the structure. Winter is when a garden's bones show — the trunk shapes, the wall, the step edges, the line of the path. Those are the things worth lighting, and they are much easier to judge without leaves in the way.
- Trees are easier to light without a canopy. You can see the branch structure you are aiming at and position the spike properly, then the canopy fills in over it in April.
- The turf recovers. A slit cut across a lawn in January has closed by April. The same cut in July is a brown line all summer.
What to do when
| When | Do this |
|---|---|
| October–November | Walk the garden after dark with a torch and decide what is worth lighting. Order the scheme. |
| December–January | Dig and lay. Cable, connectors, sleeves, spikes. Wire it up and leave it. |
| February | Get the 230V supply sorted if you need one, while electricians still have diary space. |
| March | Commission it. Aim the fittings, set the timer, adjust after dark. |
| April onwards | Move two fittings, because you always do. That is what the service loops are for. |
The two things winter installers get wrong
Aiming the fittings in winter. Don't. Lay the cable and set the positions, but leave the final aim until the canopy is back and the border has filled in — an uplighter aimed perfectly at a bare tree is aimed at nothing much in July. Every fitting we sell is adjustable for this reason.
Burying it too shallow because the ground is wet and unpleasant. 300mm in a border, 450mm under anything you might dig or drive. Warning tape above it, and a marker post where the run changes direction. See Sizing a Transformer and Cable.
If you're having other work done
This is the real bargain. If a patio, a path, a drive or a new bed is being built, the trench is already open and the labour is already there. Lighting cable laid at that moment costs a fraction of what it costs later, and the alternative is lifting a paved terrace in three years' time.
Lay more capacity than you need. A spare cable and a couple of capped spurs cost very little while the ground is open and are worth a great deal afterwards. Nobody has ever regretted running the extra cable.
And if it's already May
Then buy solar for the far half of the garden and 12V only where you can reach along an edge without cutting through planting — see 12V or Solar?. Then plan the proper run for November. It is a better outcome than trenching through a border in June, and it costs you one season.
Where to start
A complete scheme arrives with the fittings, transformer, cable and connectors already sized to each other, which removes most of the decisions. If you would rather we sized it for your garden, send a sketch with distances to support@homartuk.com — free, and usually answered within a working day.