Outdoor Lighting in Milwaukee, WI

• Milwaukee County’s Boerner Botanical Gardens is a destination of choice for park-goers and garden enthusiasts.
• Illuminating these expansive gardens to extend the public’s usage and enjoyment into the evening hours, year-round, was the goal.
• Installing durable lighting fixtures, flexible mounting systems, and a bulletproof electrical infrastructure were a few of the challenges.

When it comes to durability in landscape lighting equipment, it doesn’t get tougher than cast bronze fixtures. Materials such as cast bronze, copper, and cor-ten steel for the construction of the fixtures because they ensure lighting system longevity. The lighting fixtures had a decorative long-lasting finish, allowing them to blend into the gardens.

Due to the constantly evolving nature of the plants and landscape design in this public garden, risers were used on fixtures in areas planted heavily with perennials. Concrete footings anchored custom bollard-style path lights along walking routes. All wire was buried in PVC conduit to eliminate damaged cables during plantings and garden renovations.

This project required 10 transformers and over 400 lighting fixtures. All light sources are LED and all connections were made using weatherproof heat shrink brass connectors. Every fixture location is viewable from a 360° angle and required carefully selecting locations. Shielding and hex cell louvers were used to eliminate or minimize glare. Nearly a full mile of PVC conduit was installed along with over 2 miles of low voltage lighting cable.