Landscape Architect Articles

A Brighter Outlook04-06-16 | Department

A Brighter Outlook
LC/DBM Editor Mike Dahl

This year I was really looking forward to springing forward into daylight saving time in spite of losing a treasured hour of sleep (a three-hour-a-night Donald Trump-like sleeper I am not). My longing for this springtime ritual came to light during a glum drive home one evening in the dead of winter. Yes, even in subtropical Southern California we have a dead of winter, the most obvious manifestation of which is the shorter daylight hours. At its low point, it is dark when I wake up, and already an hour or so past nightfall when I wrap up my normal business day – and it was wearing on me more than usual.

So once the clock change happened, I was charged up that, in spite of darkness once again accosting me as I start my day (for a while anyway), sunshine, a sunset or at the very least, dusk, welcomes me when I emerge from Landscape Communications' offices.

And that was sort of the original intention of daylight saving time. Its early proponents believed that by moving the clocks forward as the daylight hours grow longer, people would make better use of those hours by not dozing through the early ones (a little bit of sluggard shaming was put to use) and taking advantage of the post-workday sunlight for outdoor activities.

Contrary to popular belief, DST was not proposed as a help to farmers. In fact, the agricultural community has always been one of its main detractors since their days are set by the sun, not the clock, and those days are disrupted when the surrounding non-farming citizens essentially arrive and leave an hour early for over half of the year.

And saving energy was cited only as a secondary benefit of moving our clocks ahead. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the idea started to gain a foothold, it was accepted that, because lighting was a primary use of electricity, people turning in closer to dusk would cut back on the need for electricity. But today, because our lights are so efficient, and our appliances, air conditioners, office equipment and such tend to use electricity the same number of hours per day regardless of what the clock says, it is widely reported that little or no energy reductions occur during modern daylight saving time.

So our well-being is what daylight saving time is all about. Which brings me to the point of these musings - the power of light to enrich our lives, which is on full display in the pages in this month's issue as it illustrates how landscape lighting professionals enhance people's outdoor environments so they can be enjoyed for more hours of the day regardless of the season.

Interestingly, most of the lighting projects featured in LC/DBM in my three-year tenure have been upgrades or complete do-overs of existing systems. One reason for this has been that improved technology makes for better installations, but I also often hear about customers that are just not happy about the design and execution of their original lighting. What may have seemed fine at first, falls flat when compared to their neighbor's striking nighttime panorama.

If this revelation makes you anxious, there are many ways to prevent your projects from becoming has-beens. Reading the design and installation tips in this issue is a good place to start. Many lighting manufacturers offer training courses. Some post-secondary schools do too. For more advanced learning, the International Landscape Lighting Institute presents their Intensive Course: a five-day class led by acclaimed lighting designer Janet Lennox Moyer. And the lighting industry associations (AOLP, IES, ALA, IDA, IALD) are a wealth of information.

So I hope you enjoy this issue and may it help you harness the power of light and focus it in a positive direction for your business.

As seen in LC/DBM magazine, April 2016.