How to Hang Lights in a Home Garden

Garden lights provide a versatile way to extend your garden decoration into the hours after the sun goes down. Garden centers and supply stores offer a wide variety: Oriental paper lanterns, outdoor spotlights, light fixtures and solar lights that can be placed along a pathway. One of the most popular and inexpensive lights for home gardens are strand lights that can be draped or hung around trees, stakes, the sides of a building or over an umbrella or pergola.

Tape measure
Lighting strands
Ladder
Clips
Plastic cable ties
Lighting stakes
Light timer
Extension cords
Multi-outlet adapter
Plastic electrical tape

Instructions

- 1
  Sketch out your garden on a piece of paper. Devise a plan for your lighting design by sketching the types and locations of your lights. Draw in the points where you will secure your light strands, light timers, extension cords and adapters.
- 2
  Measure the points where your lights will hang with a tape measure to ensure that your lighting strands are the correct length. Test lighting strings by plugging the lights into an electrical source. Replace any bulbs that do not light.
- 3
  Secure lights to the roofline of your home or garden shed with lighting clips.
- 4
  String lights along pathways by inserting stakes into the ground and hanging light strings through the attachment at the top of the stakes.
- 5
  Determine the length of lights that you need for a tree or shrub by multiplying the width by the height. Multiply that figure by three for C9 or C7 lights. Multiply the figure by six for miniature lights.
- 6
  Tie light strands to tree and shrub branches with cable ties rather than draping them. Attach the light strands to extension cords and run them to the electrical outlets.
- 7
  Attach these extension cords to a multi-outlet adapter. Plug the adapter into an outdoor timer. Set the timer to turn the lights on and off each evening.

How to Paint a Mural on a Fence

How to Landscape With Bird Feeders

Lawn Ornaments