Garden lighting

This thread has turned out so much better than I'd hoped. Some interesting ideas that I'd never have considered have been put forward

A few of you have got it nearly right, partly right, and more or less completely right in one or two cases.

My back garden doesn't get much light in the morning, as it has a north-westerly aspect. The sunlight starts down the far end of the garden and advances towards the house as the day progresses. By about 10AM (at this time of year), it reaches the play area in the middle section, while the lawn is still in shade. I've often toyed with the idea of catching some surplus sunshine and reflecting it back in but two things put me off:
1) The prospect of too much sunshine being concentrated onto the lawn and scorching it
2) The angle of reflection being pure torture for my two young (and therefore small) kids.

I did some experiments with old CDs. I found that they reflect very well, but not too harshly. So, the lad and I set to work with a load of old CDs, a bamboo cane and some tape to build our prototype sun catcher. In the mornings, it works well to reflect a small amount of light back onto the lawn. Not enough to scorch or anything, but enough to cast some bright spots into the shade.

What we hadn't bargained on was its effectiveness at night. There is no power source for it, not LEDs, no batteries, nothing. It is about 30-40 ft from the house and at night the garden is pretty dark if I don't put the flood light on. There or no street lights or anything shining in. The level of glow you see in the first photo comes from nothing more than our kitchen light being on, and our kitchen light is an aged, due to be replaced, dull fluorescent strip light. It seems the CDs catch and focus whatever light is available and get the maximum they can out of it. As an added bonus because of the magic way CDs are made, you get the intense colours you see in the photo, and those colours change depending on the viewing angle, so its quite nice I think.

The prototype has exceeded our expectations, so we're going to make some more, but we're going to try to get a bit arty about it so it doesn't just look like CDs taped to a stick (which is exactly what the prototype is), but rather hopefully something that looks a bit more interesting.

 

Something like this? (pic taken last December at 16:o6 - I visited in the late afternoon to see it in semi-darkness)