The two most common general methods for landscape lighting include "general purpose lighting" and "special purpose lighting". General purpose lighting will light up the whole garden at night.

Special purpose lighting is used to create mood, and it spotlights certain areas of your garden such as rock gardens, water features, or specific plants or trees. The light and shadow effects that result from this special purpose night lighting can be amazing. The shadows that you can create can be as interesting and as important as the lighted areas.

One sample lighting setup that is cheap and easy to create is "Japanese garden lamps". These lamps are carved in stone and can be used to line pathways. They are both functional and moody.

It is very important to start planning your lighting system early. You will need to lay the wiring underground before creating paths or other features to avoid extra work in the future.

If you wish, you can avoid using any wiring at all by using solar lighting. This type of lighting uses the power of the sun to make electricity. It stores the energy in a battery during the day to be used at night or at any time in the future. The battery is made out of nickel-cadmium, which works much better than the original lead-acid batteries.

The standard outdoor landscape light bulb has been replaced by an LED, which uses less power. These improvements have made solar power much more practical. You must place the lights in an area that receives plenty of direct sunlight during the day for them to work as well as possible, though. Shadows from trees or your house will reduce the effectiveness.

If you cannot avoid placing the solar powered lights in a shady area, special versions of the lights are available where the solar cell and battery are located away from the lights. This way, you can place the lights where you need them but they can still get power from direct sunlight.

This is a good way to light shady areas during the day as well. To make this possible, you will have to run wiring from the light fixture and the solar cell and battery. Again, planning this ahead of time will save you time and money. You will want the distance that the wiring has to go to be as short as possible.