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At A Glance: The Lighted Rings


To follow is a visual collection of light rings which we have placed in winter containers over the past 15 years or so. This first picture is a detail of the last.  The last picture features our current display of them at the shop. I am very pleased that adding strings of twig garland lights proved to be transformative. We will go on making them – in one form or another.


lighted ring lined with fir

five foot ring with red twig dogwood


galvanized snowflakes and snowball picks


Jackie Classic style steel box and light ring both fabricated at The Branch Studio

curly willow on either side of a ring

2′ and 3′ diameter light rings featuring cherry light strings and galvanized steel holly and berry garlands.  The 5′ ring in the foreground is lighted with a Lumineo compact light set.


light ring in a thicket

2011

dried plants from the garden. The bright light in the foreground is a string of C7 incandescent lights piled up.


five foot ring lined with a boxwood garland

crisp and contemporary

alder branches


holiday

beaming in the rose arbor


cornus “Midwinter Fire” branches, magnolia branches and fir

alder branches and faux berry picks

white tipped green pinecone garlands and fir added to the rings

a client’s breathaking winter container featuring a five foot light ring


light ring wreathed in fir garland with a trio of steel pine cones

This three foot ring is additionally lighted with 2 strands of twig garland lights

Detroit Garden Works winter 2025

Posted on: January 27, 2025 20 Comments
Filed Under: Garden Ornament, Picture This, Detroit Garden Works, Lighting, Winter, Deborah Silver and Co Inc Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Taking the Next Step


It was not my intent to give the impression that the time it took to write my previous post was in any way comparable to the time it took to light up that first vintage steel hoop and end up manufacturing steel light rings. In face I want to discourage that interpretation. That post was written well after the fact and in a matter of hours. The evolution of that glimmer of an idea to light up a vintage tractor wheel and hang it in a tree to shipping light rings all over the US – that took years.  It takes loads of time to move off one’s own familiar dime in search of a new way of seeing –  or being. Doesn’t it?

It was many years ago that we moved up to making light rings with multi colored light strands. White mini lights were not the only game in town, right? The hoops were fashioned from channel steel the width of which snugly held the incandescent light strings in place. The wrapping of the lights was a very formal and serious affair. Once Rob leapt off the usual and familiar, he abandoned the incandescent light strings for LED’s. The price had come down, and the expense to power them up was dramatically less. That was a crucially important step, but it meant that the hoops had to be redesigned. The ring is wider and the channel is deeper now. The best news of all of that transformation is the cost of running the lights around the clock, and close to all year long, was very reasonable. The interest in the hoops grew.

I recall a fling with LED cherry light strands. Rob does make lots of winter/holiday lighting available to customers of Detroit Garden Works. The cherry lights are just one style of many we have had available to use. We took to those cherry lights-meaning we wrapped light rings with them.  The fascination with those luminous sphere lights goes on – as well it should. I also remember a brief bead we had on various mixes of lights large and small. We were hooping it up.  Years later, a five foot ring belonging to an adventuresome client now has lighted ornament hanging in that big empty space inside the ring. Hung from an arbor at the far end of her driveway, it lights the way as much as it says welcome home and Merry Christmas. The winter lights have a sculptural intent, but they also shoo away the dark.

Rob stepped up to a version of the hanging light hoop that featured four rod steel legs. The new free standing rings could be placed in pots, or directly into the soil in the landscape. This step forward was liberating. One year a five foot light ring strung with our LED mini lights was wreathed in large galvanized snow flakes –  zip tied on to the steel circle – one 3-D flake at a time. I don’t remember how that idea came to be, but it was smashing.  Months ago, a client with existing light rings was looking for a fresh iteration. I was fussing a little and fuming plenty about what to do with them –  not seeing a clear way forward. It finally occurred to me that her lighted rings could be armatures or structures. Those rings could be the supporting cast.  A foundation upon which another independent element could be added.

I found a direction worth pursuing. Pairing a light ring with a 6′ long lighted twig garland proved to be just the thing for taking a sculptural step. This light garland is very different than a typical light strand featuring all of the lights in an evenly spaced row. Once the garland is fluffed out, it added volume to the ring without weighing it down.  The sturdily wired and lit branchlets enabled placing them both to the inside and to the outside of the ring. We featured this pairing this past week in the winter containers in the front of the shop. The long wired arms make the lights appear to be floating around the ring. Handsome, this.

Once all of our winter work for clients is done, we dress the front of the shop. This is a project we greatly enjoy, as it signals that all of our booked work is finished. The pace slows down. We take that time to sort out how we want to proceed, as we can. The centerpiece of this garden is a large and substantial cast iron vat.  Five cases of noble fir from an alternate supplier sitting untouched in a corner proved to be the largest and longest fir boughs of the entire season. We had no idea that these boxes held such evergreen gold.  That robust scale and length was just what this light ring and vat needed to make a winter container where every element is of proper proportion to the size of the space and the container.

The windowsills inside my office are deep. I would say a foot or better. I have long toyed with the idea of making that interior sill space part of the exterior winter display-and vice versa. There is no reason not to. The glass is not a barrier to seeing. We loaded small galvanized rectangles with dry foam and lights, and 4 rows of pussy willow, set them close to the glass.

Those closely spaced sticks provided a simple yet uniformly textured background to the rings. It afforded the vignette some depth. They helped to define the space. They look good!

Making the view of the inside an integral part of the outside also provided privacy from the inside out. Every step we took with this project was a step in a direction I liked.

Filling the 2 planter boxes on either side of the front door solidly with bunches of pussy willow completed the look.


Bring it on, January.

Posted on: January 16, 2025 42 Comments
Filed Under: Lighting, Winter, Detroit Garden Works, Holiday, Seasonal Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Lighted Steel Hoops

I don’t remember how long ago it was that Rob began experimenting with attaching lights to steel forms, but I would guess it was at least 10 years ago. There was a series of steel augurs, wound with rope lights, and hung from stout branches in the linden trees. Any farm tool was fair game. This was in the very early days of our winter and holiday season, so Rob haunted every store within driving distance for different kinds of exterior lighting.
There were galvanized steel pipes of varying lengths completely covered with light strands. They were threaded over a solid pipe that had been driven in to the ground. The quality of these incandescent light strings was on the poor side, and they furthermore required a lot of electricity to run. LED outdoor lighting was in its infancy, and the harsh bluish light was reminiscent of gas station bathroom lighting. Light to be interrogated by, as it were. There were winter arrangements that had lighting wound around the pots. There was a phase when he made his own lighting by assembling cords and bulbs bought one at a time. There were galvanized buckets with lights, greens and cones. Set it on your porch, plug it in, and celebrate the winter. Rob never was one for overly elaborate or complicated displays. He likes simple and casually striking. There were winter container arrangements that had light strings as mulch. Strands of C-7 and C-9 lights were piled high. Eventually we had to upgrade all of our existing exterior circuits to 20 amps each, and we added more circuits for good measure. We were lit.

Sooner or later, something solid was bound to come from all of his tinkering. The day he came home with a pair of vintage wagon wheels that he wound round with lights, and hung in the airspace in the shop, I could tell something was in the air. There was something about that circle of light that was as satisfying as it was fascinating. A client bought them both in short order. That winter, he spent a lot of time designing a steel hoop especially engineered to hold and securely capture the lights, and we manufactured them in different sizes.
A year later, he designed an integral stand for the rings. This meant they could be securely inserted into a pot, or in the ground. In the air, or in the ground-you can take your pick, or do both. By this time, he had found an LED lighting line that he liked. The lighted hoops were a winter decoration that could be enjoyed year after year. Three years in to the lighted hoop manufacture, he suggested that perhaps it was time to move on to another shape. I was incredulous. That circle of light was so simple, so visually striking and so easy to use, I couldn’t imagine him giving it up. So we have fine tuned the engineering, and continued to make them. Jackie has shipped them all over the US and Canada. To gardeners, and not gardeners. To designers, florists, and restaurateurs. A sure sign of a great design, they adapt instantly to any setting.

Clients for whom we do winter pots ask for them now, and we are happy to oblige. That ring of light features the fixings in a winter centerpiece in an elegant and stunning way.

Rob manufactures them in sizes starting with a 2 foot diameter, on up to a 7 footer. Pictured above is a 5 foot diameter light ring. Since the lights are on the outside of the hoop, we sometimes install string lighting at the bottom of the centerpiece, and or in the greens.

The sculptural quality of the hoops make them a design asset even during the day. I have no idea how many hoops Rob has out there now, but there are lots. Every time I see one, I think about his long term interest in lighting the garden and landscape in the winter. He tells me he enjoys seeing the work of others fabricating their own version of lighted hoops. It is a testament to a great idea that variations on this theme have sprouted in other places by other people. To follow are pictures of winter arrangements new and old that feature his light rings. They are all different in execution, and all the same in their successful effort to keep the winter dark at bay.

See what I mean?

Posted on: December 22, 2020 29 Comments
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Lighting, Winter Tagged With: , , , , ,

Winter Pots For Ms. H

Every project we do for the winter season begins with a good deal of discussion. The winter containers for Ms. H is the subject of a particular discussion. That astonishing level of discussion on her behalf is simple to understand. We have a big love for her. This year, we had two issues to address. The forms were very long and narrow. This meant there was always the danger, and sometimes the reality that the foam would break in the middle. The fact that all four pots had steel light rings 3 feet in diameter inserted into the forms piled on additional stress. This made for a rather nerve wracking installation. It was a simple matter to split the long forms into two shorter ones. The forms could be stuffed with greens side by side, and labelled as to their position in each pot. In the picture above, Karen is detailing a plan drawing of the most significant innovation-a separate form for the light ring and all of its fixings would be set squarely on top of the spot where the pair of greens forms would meet. The half oval shape drawn on the form above would dictate the position of the light ring form. The widest point of that half oval would just about cover the spot where the two shorter forms come together. The swoop de do would be stuck with German boxwood. The rest of the lower forms would be stuck with Noble fir.  What??

It is much easier to explain this new construction protocol in pictures. I am happy to say it was entirely of David’s invention. He not only constructs winter arrangements, he is an expert at installing them. It took longer than I really want to admit for me to understand what he was proposing, but once I understand, I could appreciate the pure genius of it. The plan called for filling the interior of the ring with various picks. Why not have a separate form for the ring and its fixings? This would provide a stable base for the ring to travel in the truck. None of the picks would be disturbed trying to remove the ring for transport, and putting it back in exactly the right location during installation. The shape of the ring form was determined by the design and arrangement of the picks. The rear prongs of the ring would go through both layers of the mini form. The front prongs would rest on the lower form. If you are still unclear about the plan, don’t feel bad. David had to show me before I fully understood what he wanted to do. See the following picture.

The ring 2 layered form would sit on top of the 2 layered greens forms. That long curved upper form would cover the split forms which would be the bottom layer. Once set on top, the rear legs of the ring would be pushed all the way through both layers of foam and a little bit into the bottom forms. The picks are stable in the top two layers of foam, but they do not provide any structural connection between the two layers of foam, and the bottom two layers. Small diameter green bamboo stakes would be driven through all four layers of foam and into the soil in the pots. That would provide structural stability to the entire affair.

The top of the ring form would be stuck with German boxwood. That same boxwood would be used to cover the face of the upper form.

This rear view tells the story. The lower two layers of foam tell last years story. The very bottom piece of foam is wedged into the pot. The layer immediately above that has holes in it. Those holes are from the greens we stuck in last year. One of the advantages of using large scale evergreen boughs is that it does not take that many stems to create a lush appearance. This is why we are able to reuse the forms for a good many years. The forms are quite strong, as long as no undue stress is put to them.

The other critical design issue is all about the placement of the bottom of the ring. I like it to be set such that the bottom of the ring is visible, both during the day and at night. This placement and finish creates the illusion that the ring is floating. This means that the legs of the rings will need bamboo stakes or rebar zip tied to it, to both prop and keep it up at the desired level. I am not crazy about burying the bottom of the ring in twigs, picks or greens for another reason. Though the light sets are factory sealed, I don’t like them in a situation where water can collect and persist. If there is an electrical problem, I want easy access to the cord and transformer.

Karen does a terrific job of greening the lower forms. How she sticks them creates the illusion of a shrub growing. She does a terrific job of so many facets of the holiday installation.  How I value her work. Thanks, Karen.

The greens are heavy. They are composed of fresh wet wood, and water saturated needles. This explains the need for rocks and bricks to keep the forms from tipping over.

This table top was made from a full 4′ by 8′ sheet of plywood. This table holds 4 forms-enough for two of the four boxes. These lower forms, greened up, and punctuated with pine cones, are all ready to go to the installation phase.

This shop shot taken in process details how much work we do prior to an installation.

Once our fabrication group gets a project to this moment, we know we are ready for an installation.

The installed winter containers boxes to the right of the front door. Perfectly beautiful, to my eye.

The installed containers to the left of the front door. Be advised that we work very hard to keep the construction issues behind the scenes. The finished pots show no signs of what it took to get them to this point. Except the fact that they look deliberately composed, and finished.

Dressing the French pots in the back for the winter season was a new addition to this project. David did a great job of taking on a pair of winter container arrangements that asked for considerable size and scale.

Karen lending a hand securing the picks

A discussion of the transport scheme was lively, but the tops of these fresh cut pussy willow twigs had no problem bending over for the trip across town.

See what I mean?

Set in place, the scale of this winter arrangement works well with in this space. The materials reflect the landscape that can be viewed from this vantage point. The color is very friendly to the color in the glaze of this French bugadier. The pot is filled with gravel, so there is proper ballast to handle the height of the arrangement. The foam form provides another service. As it does not absorb water, it prevents water from getting in to the pot. This form is 6″ thick overall, so the lower 3″ is wedged tightly into the pot.

winter arrangements in the back yard

framed view

There is no doubt a viable, approachable, and beautiful winter season ahead in the garden. Every gardener needs to determine how they will handle that. I garden in every season. The winter pots help speak to that.

 

 

 

Posted on: November 30, 2019 21 Comments
Filed Under: Winter, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Holiday Tagged With: , , ,