Technology in Gardens II - PIR sensors

Recently, I wrote about how technology is changing our gardens, and I've noticed another change in how gardens are arranged, as a result of technology. This time, it's not just irrigation (which has been around in some form for centuries) and the aerial view, but the rise in outdoor lighting, and the PIR units which control them.

Lighting often requires digging of channels, running of cabling etc, so it entails a bit of forward planning - let's decide where the path is going to go, before we put the lighting in, eh? - and a bit of record keeping, so we don't accidentally dig up the cabling at a later date: especially when lights are placed in beds!

Then we had the advent of outdoor lights with PIR sensors, so for the past several years I've been up ladders or on steps, keeping the foliage clipped back around those lights and around their sensors.

And now there are new cars with parking sensors!

I seem to spend half my time these days clipping back the plants growing along the side of drives, so that overhanging foliage doesn't set off the “beep - beep - BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!”  of an indignant Park Pilot, trying to warn the driver about obstacles, whether they are real, or merely foliage.

This is in direct contradiction with the way most Clients want the foliage to “soften the hard edges” and there isn't much that's a harder edge that the side of a driveway... so now I have to find a way to retain the nice shape of plants, while still allowing clear passage for the cars.

Ho hum!

 

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