Tiki Torches for decoration and entertainment | Adding a Reflecting Pool to your Outdoor Garden Design

If you'd rather read about particular outdoor garden torch styles, click the preceding link. Likewise, we have a comprehensive post on tiki torch safety. Otherwise, read on to learn about an eye-popping garden design idea using water and tiki torches.

For today's post we'll be talking a bit about a particular lighting technique using outdoor garden tiki torches known as mirroring. I've always believed a garden should be more than just a place with flowers or vegetables. It should be an extension of your home you actually want to occupy, like another room. So my wife and I invest a fair amount of time every spring clearing out debris but we also spend a good deal of our time "rearranging the furniture." In other words, we redecorate our yard by moving container plantings, and planning what we want to accomplish to really make the space inviting.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, our yard is modest in size so we're limited in what we can accomplish. But if you have sufficient space you can really go for some dramatic results. Even in my small garden, I've managed the installation of a little pool and water fall. What my limited space prevents, much to my consternation, is the installation of a reflecting pool.

Reflecting pools use a trick of light playing on water to mirror objects (depending on viewing angles) on the surface of the water. To pull this off it helps to understand the way things reflect. First, allowing that both the pond and the object you want to reflect are equally lit by ambient light, you need to overcome that by either adding more light to the object or by dimming the light reaching the surface of the water. Obviously, lighting can help here but there are additional tricks. If you envision the reflecting pool in Washington, DC, you can see how both are equally lit by the sun during the day. Yet wonderful reflections of the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial (depending on which side of the pool you view from) are still managed even during bright daylight hours. How do they do it?

The three elements that help achieve daylight reflection in Washington are 1) the light colored material of both the monument and memorial relative to 2) the dark lining of the reflecting pool and its 3) shallowness. All these elements combine to create a wonderful mirror. At night, the reflection is even more dramatic as both the memorial and monument are well illuminated but the surface of the reflecting pool is not. Hence, light from two structures bounces from the objects to the water and reflects.

In your own garden, a reflecting pool should attempt to emulate those features. Remember that there isn't much point having a mirror pond if you aren't reflecting something worth reflecting. A set-apart structure such as a gazebo does well. Likewise, a dramatic architectural feature, statue or ornamental tree. Just remember that if you want to see the reflection at night you need the object to be well lit. if you are relying on a tiki torch to illuminate the object, ensure the object is either small enough or that you have enough torches to illuminate it well.

Also consider your viewing angles. Long sweeping views down a long reflecting pool are certainly impressive, but dramatic results can be accomplished with more modest designs. Imagine yourself walking through a meandering garden path. You turn a corner and find yourself in a secluded outdoor nook with a little pond and a small Buddhist shrine illuminated by tiki torches. The play of light creates a perfect reflection in the water. It's all about surprising and inspiring the senses, not breaking the bank to build the biggest pond you can.

Also remember that a reflecting pool should have still water for good results. While moving water is often all you need to prevent mosquitoes from taking up residence in a pond, still water is a breeding paradise for these pests. That means accounting for them and taking steps to prevent them. You'll either want to consider mosquito eating fish or mosquito pellets.

I won't go into details on how to design a reflecting pool right now. We'll save that for a later post or I'll find a good site that walks you through it and link to that. But I want you to visualize your objectives in this post. Design your reflecting pool with the following in mind.

• A dark lining
• An object worth reflecting
• Sufficient illumination of the object at night
• Limited light reaching the surface of the pond at night
• A dramatic or surprising viewing angle
• Still water

Reflecting pools, large or small, are a wonderful garden feature. The use of tiki torches in your design will allow you to continue the magic into the post-daylight hours. Though you should allow sufficient time for planning your installation and building the pond, maintenance is relatively simple. My small pond in my garden occupies maybe 1-2 hours of my time every year. It's time well spent given the return on investment.

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