Bethesda Garden

Landscape And Light Transform A Backyard Into A Suburban Oasis

3 MIN READ

An artistic use of light in a residential setting best describes this backyard and pool area in suburban Washington, D.C., but it almost didn’t come to pass. Although the clients had hired lighting designer Debra Gilmore for the interiors of their Bethesda, Md., home, they hadn’t realized that they could call on her expertise for the exterior landscape lighting as well. By the time Gilmore was back on the project, several months had elapsed since the interiors were complete, and a landscape plan was already in place. Construction of a stone retaining wall—as a good portion of the site around the patio and pool is a steep, sloped area—was well under way, so her task was to find the “moments” in the architectural landscape where it would make the most sense to add light. “It takes a big budget to spread light out over a large area,” Gilmore explains. “So our approach is to delineate by area.”

With the view from the client’s kitchen window and back steps in mind, Gilmore decided to first concentrate her lighting efforts on the water feature at the retaining wall on the far side of the backyard. The waterfall is composed of four flagstone slabs of differing lengths, ranging from 2-feet-long to 5-feet-long, that cantilever from the wall in a staggered formation. With input from a lighting manufacturer that she had collaborated with before, Gilmore developed a custom high-output white LED striplight with a damp-listing to graze the stone wall. Each linear LED array is housed in an extruded acrylic channel, which fits into a ¾-inch-wide-by-5/8-inch-tall edge detail on the underside of the flagstone slabs. Halogen accent fixtures with adjustable stems, located in the bed of river rocks below the waterfall, provide an endcap of light for this luminous feature. The overall effect is serene as the lighting captures the flow of water, the texture of the stone wall, and the flagstone slab edges to create a harmonious composition.

Rounding out this scene is a second layer of light, achieved with two theatrical projectors with dichroic filters, each of which is mounted on a 20-foot-tall pole at the corners of the house. They are cross-aimed to achieve a floodlighting effect on the hillside garden area above and beyond the retaining wall. A mock-up helped demonstrate this set-up for the client to alleviate their concerns about the height of the poles.

Next, Gilmore turned her attention to the house. Taking her cues from the waterfall, she illuminated the flagstone steps that lead from the kitchen and family room out to the patio with five, 4-foot-long linear arrays, this time with amber LEDs. “I wanted to be playful and mirror the asymmetry of what was happening in the wall,” she says. Small in scale but not without major impact, these vignettes of light transform the backyard’s hardscaped surfaces into something soft and fluid, and create a lighting vocabulary that complements this residential setting.

Project Bethesda Garden, Bethesda, Md.
Landscape Architect Ching-Fang Chen, Potomac, Md.
Lighting Designer Gilmore Lighting Design, Bethesda, Md.
Masons Williams & Williams Landscaping, Herndon, Va.
Photographer Jeffrey O’Connor, Washington, D.C.
Manufacturers B-K Lighting, Prolume, Tivoli

About the Author

Elizabeth Donoff

Elizabeth Donoff is Editor-at-Large of Architectural Lighting (AL). She served as Editor-in-Chief from 2006 to 2017. She joined the editorial team in 2003 and is a leading voice in the lighting community speaking at industry events such as Lightfair and the International Association of Lighting Designers Annual Enlighten Conference, and has twice served as a judge for the Illuminating Engineering Society New York City Section’s (IESNYC) Lumen Award program. In 2009, she received the Brilliance Award from the IESNYC for dedicated service and contribution to the New York City lighting community. Over the past 11 years, under her editorial direction, Architectural Lighting has received a number of prestigious B2B journalism awards. In 2017, Architectural Lighting was a Top Ten Finalist for Magazine of the Year from the American Society of Business Publication Editors' AZBEE Awards. In 2016, Donoff received the Jesse H. Neal Award for her Editor’s Comments in the category of Best Commentary/Blog, and in 2015, AL received a Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Media Brand (Overall Editorial Excellence).Prior to her entry into design journalism, Donoff worked in New York City architectural offices including FXFowle where she was part of the project teams for the Reuters Building at Three Times Square and the New York Times Headquarters. She is a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Me., and she earned her Master of Architecture degree from the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.

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