How do you reimagine a garden venue and bring it to light?

Landscape lighting can be a visceral and an emotional experience. Creating a landscape lighting palette requires talent and experience. Designers like to say that landscape lighting is as much of an art as it is a science, no matter the scale of
the project.

The South Coast Botanic Garden tasked lighting designer Anthony Bogdanovich and his company California Outdoor Lighting, with an amazing request, reimagine about 25 of the Garden's 88 acres with a holiday lighting scene that was as beautiful by day as it was by night. This would be their first major night-time event and the stakes were high. The show was named "GLOW" which is an acronym for Garden Lights and Ocean Waters. The result was a winter wonderland way beyond a traditional holiday setting.

Eventually, Bogdanovich and his team installed 1200-1300 low voltage fixtures along with many other lighting devices to create various themes throughout the gardens. This project required Bogdanovich and his team to step outside of their comfort level. The scale and magnitude of the lighting design took months from design to completion. Bogdanovich stretched his creativity way beyond his traditional, residential
landscape lighting.

"We have a great eye for lighting spaces and establishing balance and cohesion, but this was a little different," Bogdanovich admits. "We had to make sure that we could capture everybody's
eye, invitingly."

Ultimately, Bogdanovich's team added music and water effects to also stimulate the senses with the intention that when guests walked through the enchanted garden, they would become mesmerized by the overall experience. The team's objective was to create an impact and that is exactly what they did.

The Creative Process
Bogdanovich had a six-person lighting team that had to work to overcome some of obstacles of the Garden before starting. The first challenge the team faced was the Garden's outdated electrical infrastructure that included some areas

 
without power.
Since the main task for the team was to ensure the safety of visitors, they reviewed any areas that could be a problem for guests at night. The Garden up to then was completely dark without any lighting.

To help alleviate that issue, the team had to bring in additional power and generators and learn how to balance the load requirements per zone. Bogdanovich said that they installed nearly nine miles of low voltage cable that needed to be hidden, some of it buried and some of it placed behind plants, shrubs and trees.

The team at California Outdoor Lighting also got creative and brought in overhead poles to define some of the walkways. As mentioned, the chief priority was safety and functionality.

To protect the installation components and electrical hubs from the occasional rain, the team provided enclosures and had tarps ready at hand.

The Main Attraction
To really accentuate the overall impact of the display, Bogdanovich contacted Bruce Dennis at Lightcraft Outdoor in Chatsworth, California, to help him incorporate their amazing 12v landscape lighting globe products as part of the "Glowing Gardens" project. Bogdanovich designed "scenes" with multiple sized lighting globes with interchangeable, programmable RGB color changing T3 lamps.

The landscape globes, referred to as "glowing orbs" at the Garden, became the centerpiece of the light show. They added intrigue day and night and were dramatically showcased in a section of the Garden referred to as Bubble Lane.

Lining the entrance down the promenade were "bubble machines," that splash the plants in rich color hues. The lane also included 110 lighting globes. This created the crown jewel of the show - a rainbow effect which was able to be seen across the garden. Bogdanovich said that by using additional fixtures with narrow beam spreads, a distinct separation between color was produced, creating the
rainbow effect.

Bogdanovich had many choices of lighting globes since they are available in seven diameters with the options of landscape and pendant style designs. There was a lot to undertake and the final design could only be a matter of trial and error - which lighting globes looked and felt the most appropriate for each area of the many acres that were part of the project.

The overriding theme, states Bogdanovich, is "Lighting is an art and we wanted to feature the beautiful landscape at this garden in a way it has never been seen before."

The combination of the 12v lighting globes changing color at varying speeds made a huge impact on the overall excitement of the event.

The lighting globes offered a surreal and enchanting result and were considered a major success as "garden art with amazing lighting effects."

The Debut
GLOW opened on Nov. 21, 2020, and stayed open until Jan. 13, 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic caused some adjustments to be made as guests and attendees were limited and had to follow safety protocol.

Nonetheless, Bogdanovich was thrilled at the success.

"What we wanted to accomplish more than everything else was to bring people together at a time where everybody was getting pushed apart," he enthused. "The show was a big inspiration for us, just to have people feel like life is normal again."

Second Act
The show was such a success in 2020, the South Coast Botanic Garden asked California Outdoor Lighting back again. The display was completely redesigned and updated for a second season. That year the show grew to about 30 acres with 2,400 low voltage fixtures, 10 miles of holiday lights, 11 high lumen projectors, 60 transformers and 10 different zones of music.

"Because the show was so successful the first year, we wanted to add some additional emphasis," says Bogdanovich.

"It made us step outside our comfort zone, but the team learned many more aspects and techniques to outdoor lighting than we ever imagined. GLOW was more than a holiday lighting display. It was where families and friends walked in awe with the dazzling lights and immersed themselves in wonder. Lighting does what other elements cannot do - create a visual experience that can be truly poetic and touch the soul."