Coral Gables Historical Archive
The Coral Gables Times
Thursday, April 5, 1962, page 49 (of 60)
The page
The text of this pageRead by computer from the scan, so some words may be wrong. The page picture is the original.
to Light Your Grounds
more effective—with the new techniques BY STANLEY SCHULER at night, these are black, ugly mirrors, but when the yard beyond is lighted, the glass resumes its daytime transparency. Another reason is that even the relatively subdued light used in illuminating the landscape makes for greater safety. To city officials, lighting which brings out the beauty of trees, shrubs, flowers, and pools means increased public use of parks and greater park revenues. It can also reduce crime. Suburban business concerns find that landscaped and illuminated grounds not only catch the public eye, but also meld the large buildings into the surrounding scene and thus help mollify homeowners who object to their presence. Finally, lighting the landscape is fun for everyone who tries it. There are few happier or easier ways to give vent to the creative urge than to shine a light into a dark tree or on an invisible clump of flowers and see what happens. The man who is one of today's most far-ranging and stimulating landscape illumination practitioners is a tall, bespectacled Texan named John Watson. He designed the Queen Victoria Park lighting and the equally spectacular lighting for a Dallas historical amusement park. He has also lighted the gardens of homes and commercial buildings in various parts of the continent. To see any one of these—and several millions of people did last year—is to be inspired to duplicate it in a small way yourself. WALKING THROUGH Queen Victoria Park on a summer night, for instance, you are exhilarated yet relaxed—in another world. Even in winter, the park is magnificent. You are mesmerized by the trees, coated in glistening snow and ice and shrouded fitfully by the bright, billowing fog. It is as if you were suddenly transferred to the center of a giant Wagnerian opera set. Watson's home-garden scenes have a similar, but less overpowering, effect on the visitor. His usual practice is to fill a garden with cool, bright artificial moonlight that picks out interesting tree trunks, silhouettes others, and creates a network of shadows. Then he injects a few dramatic accents. He spotlights a small statue from two or three sides, or places an oriental pagoda lantern in a prominent position and fits it with a low-wattage light that looks like a flickering flame. In one recently lighted garden he hung hundreds of "fireflies" in the trees. The first thing Watson does with prospective clients is to invite them to his own home in Dallas. There, in the 50-by-50-foot back yard which he has turned into a Japanese garden, he has installed more than 100 lights, four miles of wiring. Sitting at a switchboard which resembles a church-organ console, he demonstrates the difference between ordinary flat floodlighting and what he calls "planned aesthetic illumination." He turns the lights up high for games, down low for conversation; switches to red for theatrical effects and to apricot to enhance complexions. He can light the entire garden or any feature of it. Later, when a prospect becomes a customer, Watson makes a detailed study of the landscape to be lighted. The plan he then draws on paper is so carefully worked out that the lights can be installed entirely in the daytime. Only a few minor adjustments need be made after dark. His installa- Continued on page 36 light and medium-bright bulbs — 150 watts and under. Suburbia Today, April 1962 29
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