Garden and landscape lighting is specified by mounting height, not by fixture type. The height decides how much of the scheme a person sees directly, how far each unit throws, how many units the site needs, and whether the result reads as a lit garden or as a row of bright objects in the dark. Choosing the fixture first – a bollard because bollards look right, a lantern because lanterns look traditional – is how landscape schemes end up over-lit at the eye and under-lit on the ground.
Artay Lighting has run its own aluminium die-casting foundry in Başakşehir, Istanbul since 1999, and exports to more than 33 countries. Our bollard range is used in garden, park and landscape schemes as well as on urban streets. We should say what we do not do as well: we do not make high-mast poles, we buy in extruded aluminium profile rather than pressing our own, and we do not design lighting schemes – that is the landscape architect’s work. What follows is the specification reasoning we give when a designer asks us what to quote.
What mounting height belongs in a garden, a park or a landscaped plaza?
Work down from the space, not up from the catalogue. The table below is the ladder we use when a drawing arrives with no heights on it.
| Space | Mounting height | What that is |
|---|---|---|
| Planting bed edge, terrace, private garden path | 0.6–1.2 m | Bollard |
| Courtyard, hotel grounds, public garden, pedestrian path | 3–4 m | Single-head decorative pole |
| Park avenue, promenade, campus route | 4–6 m | Urban pole |
| Car park and service road inside the landscape | 6–8 m | Urban pole, arm optional |
| Distributor road at the site boundary | 8–12 m | Street lighting pole |
Above 12 m the answer is a high-mast pole and we do not make one. Say so early in a tender rather than late.
The two heights that get confused are 1.2 m and 3 m. A bollard lights the surface it stands on and roughly two to three metres of path either side; it cannot light a lawn, a facade or a tree. A 3 m pole lights an area but puts a source in the sightline of anyone walking towards it. If a garden needs both – and most do – they are two separate line items, not one compromise height.
Which standard applies to a garden path?
EN 13201 covers it, through its P classes. The M classes are road surface luminance for motorised traffic; the P classes are maintained illuminance for pedestrian areas, running from P1 at 15 lux down to P6 at 2 lux. A park path, a campus route and a garden walk all sit in that range, and a specification that names a P class is a specification a manufacturer can quote against.
What matters more is what EN 13201 does not contain. None of its class families sets an upward light ratio limit, a colour temperature requirement or any spectral criterion. A luminaire can meet the standard in full and still throw light into a bedroom window, wash the underside of a tree canopy and sit at a colour temperature nobody in a residential garden wants. In road lighting that gap is partly covered by the road authority’s own rules. In a garden there is no road authority, which is why landscape schemes are where the gap actually bites.
The rest of the specification vocabulary is the same as any exterior scheme: EN 40-2 for column dimensions and tolerances, EN 40-3-1 for characteristic loads, EN 40-3-3 for verification by calculation, EN 40-6 for aluminium columns, EN 60598-2-3 for the luminaire, EN ISO 1461 where any part is hot dip galvanized, and CIE 150 for obtrusive light.
Why do garden schemes generate complaints, and what stops them?
Because a garden is surrounded by people who are trying to sleep. A road is not. The same luminaire that is unremarkable on a distributor road becomes the thing a resident telephones about when it is thirty metres from a window.
CIE 150 handles this by classifying the surroundings rather than the fixture. The zone is chosen from where the site is, and it then governs how much light may leave the scheme:
| Zone | Surroundings | Typical landscape work |
|---|---|---|
| E0 | Intrinsically dark; dark sky places and reserves | Interpretation trails, observatory grounds |
| E1 | Dark; relatively uninhabited rural areas and national parks | Nature park paths, protected landscape |
| E2 | Low district brightness; villages and dark outer suburbs | Village square, rural hotel grounds |
| E3 | Medium district brightness; suburbs and small town centres | Residential estate, municipal park |
| E4 | High district brightness; town and city centres with night-time activity | City plaza, waterfront promenade |
Two practical consequences. First, the same park in an E2 village and an E4 city centre is not the same lighting job, and a specification that does not state the zone is asking the manufacturer to guess. Second, a bollard is inherently better placed than a pole to keep light inside a site, because it is low and its optic looks down – but only if the light source is not visible from a standing eye height. A bollard with an exposed lamp at 1 m is a glare source at exactly the height a person looks.
What colour temperature should a landscape scheme specify?
State it in the order. It is the single most common omission we see, and the one that is impossible to fix after delivery.
The direction of travel in exterior lighting guidance is towards lower blue content. The DarkSky Approved luminaires programme, for example, will not certify a product whose light source exceeds a nominal 3000 K, and excludes colour-tunable products that offer any option above it. Planting also reads differently under different sources: greens and browns hold their colour at warmer temperatures, while cooler light flattens foliage and pushes stonework grey.
None of that makes a single number correct for every site. It makes the number a decision the designer owns and writes down. Send us the colour temperature with the order and we will confirm what we can supply against it before anything is cast.
Why is a garden fixture aluminium and not galvanized steel?
Because of where it stands. Galvanizing protects steel by sacrificing zinc, and the coating on a bollard is within reach of shoes, trolleys, mowers, strimmers and de-icing salt. Damage at that height is not cosmetic; it is the start of a corrosion clock. A die-cast aluminium body has no sacrificial layer to lose, and the chromate pre-treatment and electrostatic powder coating go onto a substrate that does not rust when the coating is scratched.
Our bollard and decorative pole bodies are cast in EN AC-46000 (AlSi9Cu3) in our own foundry. Steel still belongs on the taller columns at the boundary of a landscape, where height and wind load decide the material. The full argument, including which corrosivity category sends you which way, is in the lighting pole materials guide.
Can a landscape range be made to your own design?
Yes, and the answer splits in two – which is the part most suppliers answer as though it were one question.
A dimensional change needs no new mould and carries no minimum order: height, diameter, wall thickness, arm length, door position and RAL colour are all set per project. If a landscape architect wants the same bollard at 900 mm instead of 1,100 mm in a bronze RAL, that is a normal order.
A change of form needs a new mould, and a mould has an economy:
| New mould cost | 4,000–50,000 USD, depending on part size |
|---|---|
| Minimum order on a new mould | 1,000–2,000 pieces |
| Mould making | 4–6 weeks |
| Production run | 3 weeks |
| First delivery from drawing approval | 7–9 weeks |
| Repeat order on an existing mould | 3 weeks, no minimum, no tooling charge |
For a single garden this is rarely the right route. For a municipality standardising a park family across a district, or a developer with several phases, the tooling amortises over the second and third order and the range becomes theirs. Our own ancient cities collection is what that looks like when it is done for a catalogue rather than one client.
What do you need to send us to get a quote?
Six things, and a drawing is not one of them if you do not have one yet.
The mounting heights and the quantity at each height. The environmental zone or, failing that, a photograph of the surroundings at night. The P class if the scheme has been calculated, or the path widths if it has not. The colour temperature. The RAL, or a note that it is open. And whether the poles are being set in concrete foundations or onto existing bases – that decides the base detail and it is the change that is most expensive to make late.
Send a drawing, a 3D model, a photograph or a written specification to info@artaylighting.com.
Five mistakes that show up on site
Spacing set from the catalogue photograph. The render shows one unit on a dark path. The scheme has forty. Spacing comes from the P class and the path width, not from how the product looks alone.
One height for the whole site. A garden that needs both path lighting and area lighting gets two heights. Forcing one compromise height under-lights the open ground and over-lights the walker.
The colour temperature left to the supplier. Whatever arrives becomes the standard for every future phase, because matching it later costs more than choosing it now.
Bollards placed where they will be hit. Turning circles, bin routes, mower runs and delivery access. A bollard in a mowing line is a maintenance item forever, whatever it is made of.
No spare stock. Landscape schemes lose units to vehicles and vandalism at a steady rate. Two to three per cent held at handover is cheaper than a repeat order at minimum quantity years later, and it guarantees the match.
Working with Artay on garden and landscape lighting
We are a manufacturer, not a lighting designer. What we are good for is the part between a designed scheme and a delivered one: casting the bodies, cutting and finishing the columns, holding the RAL across phases, and telling you honestly which of your changes needs a mould and which does not.
Bollards run 0.6–1.2 m and decorative poles 3–8 m, cast in EN AC-46000 aluminium in Başakşehir. Steel columns are cut, folded and hot dip galvanized to EN ISO 1461 to order. We are certified to TSE under TS EN 40 for lighting columns and to ISO 9001 for quality management, and we carry CE.
Send a drawing, a 3D model, a photograph or a written specification to info@artaylighting.com.
Related guides
- Bollard lights — the fixture itself: glare, spacing, what belongs in a bollard specification.
- Ancient cities collection — the models named after ancient Anatolian settlements, with the site behind each name.
- Urban lighting: a specifier’s guide — standards, obtrusive light and the decisions that are expensive to reverse.
- Lighting pole materials — galvanized steel or aluminium, and what happens where they meet.
- What a lighting pole costs — mould economics, minimum orders and lead times in full.
- Coastal lighting poles — chloride, chromate pre-treatment and what changes in a seaside specification.