Things to remember to do...

It's a busy time of year for landscape professionals, moving from late summer into autumn, so I thought I'd give you a quick reminder of a few things that you can take care of for your customer to ensure that their gardens look their best.

1. Drain down the irrigation system before the winter; the plants don't need the water. For tap-based systems, switch off the water supply, remove the controller, shake out the water and take it inside and let the water out of the filter unit.
2. Check garden lighting over properly; inspect cables and fittings for damage, check the lamps still work, check the switch still operates the lights and if it runs on a dusk sensor or timer, adjust this to suit the winter hours.
3. Consider whether the garden lighting system needs to be overhauled or added to, as the garden has evolved and developed over the years.
4. If your client hasn't got lighting then now is the time to install it so that they can look out onto their garden during the long winter months. They get a professional lighting systems and you do a bit more business with them, a win-win
5. Check pond pumps, clean out the filters and replace UV lamps if necessary.
6. Invest in an Oase PondoVac (or get each of you clients to) and you can remove the sludge and debris from the bottom of the pond.
7. Fit a pond cover net over water features for the next couple of months or until the leaves have fallen. That way, your clients water feature won't become clogged with leaves.

By being proactive and not waiting until something has gone wrong, these easy fixes help your client, save them money and help your business at the same time.

The world of lighting is changing

Halogen vs. LED, the choice is yours...

You may have noticed but over the last few years, garden lighting has changed beyond all recognition. Why? Because there is a new kid on the block – LED lighting.

Halogen lamps have been used in garden lighting for a number of years and they replaced, to a large extent, the old-fashioned mains voltage lighting such as the PAR38. It's true that there are other lamps around such as compact fluorescent and cold cathode but for this article, I’m focusing on the most important lamps in our industry, the ones that do the lions share of the work.

Anyone who has used halogen lamps will know that although it is a predictable light source, it is by no means perfect. For example, halogen lamps produce a tremendous amount of heat (so the light fittings can become very hot to touch), the lamp life is not great and running halogen lamps uses a lot of energy – just try multiplying the number of fittings in a garden by the wattage of the lamps and you’ll begin to understand the running costs.

More recently though, LED has come onto the market and it’s arrival seemed to counter all the issues of the halogen lamp ie LED lamps generate little heat, they have a very long lamp life and use a fraction of the energy to run. LED also has other benefits such as colour; any colour in the rainbow, which can either be held on a tone of your choice or, can colour change imperceptibly throughout the whole spectrum.

So, LED is the answer, yes?

Well not quite, until now there have been two problems with LED:

1.   As a new technology, manufacturers have been developing their own ranges of LED fittings, in isolation, which has led to confusion and product incompatibility issues between different manufacturers and sometimes even between ranges from the same manufacturer! The reason that this has occurred is that LED fittings must be correctly matched to the right driver (the electrical device that regulates the power to the fittings) for them to work and because the manufacturers had been doing their own thing, it had got to the stage where no one really knew which drivers would work with which fittings.At last though, this issue has now been resolved and by using the Standard Power LED driver or the High Power LED driver you can, to a large extent, mix and match your fittings without the risks of incompatibility.

2.     The other issue that has dogged LED lighting is that of understanding the light output of an LED lamp compared to that of the more familiar halogen fitting and it is this issue that has often discouraged Designers and Landscapers from taking the plunge and moving from halogen to LED. For example, when confronted with a 1w, 3w or even a 9w LED how might it compare with a 20w, 35w or 50w halogen, can I be certain of the light output and am I sure enough to recommend it to my client?

 Well to help you on your way, you can see the Landscapeplus.com lighting comparison images which will help you compare and contrast the different lamps that are available and give you a real sense of the light output you might expect.

So at long last, LED lighting, which everyone thinks of as simple and straightforward, is now just that, simple and straightforward.