Light pollution

Light pollution has been recognised in recent years as an increasing problem but has only been covered by the general law of nuisance which has been little used in relation to lighting. The Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 came into force earlier this year and expands the definition of statutory nuisance to include “artificial light emitted from premises so as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance”. So your local authority now has powers to deal with light as a nuisance if you can demonstrate that a nuisance exists. This will almost certainly cover badly positioned security floodlights, but it can also cover the “light trespass” of garden lighting glaring over the fence into neighbours windows or adjoining roadways so it essential when designing your garden lighting system to avoid using spotlights and floodlights in a way which can cause this problem. Badly chosen lights set into entrance gate pillars may even be a hazard to traffic so take care. The “dark skies” lobby claim that artificial lighting ruins the night sky for observation of the stars. Most of this is caused by old fashioned and indiscriminate public and street lighting, but in designing your garden lighting system you should be sensitive to pollution of the sky, using beams of light to “fit” the tree or statue you are uplighting, rather than flooding the sky from cheap unfocused 500 watt jobbies from the DIY store. Lighting for Gardens has a couple of online help sheets on lighting trees, one with low voltage garden lights and another with more powerful metal halide garden lights, which can help you to understand some techniques of uplighting trees in a controlled manner. There are also a couple of help sheets on choosing halogen lamps which will give you some ideas of fitting the lamp beam to the subject you are lighting. If you are worried about this issue, maybe you should think about having your creative garden lighting professionally designed – “professional lightscaping”