My first instinct is to light from inside straight up through the middle with a Unique Stellar or soft washing light. After the palm is little higher, I would down light from the palm softly as well. Make sure to get palm trimmed or the dead frawns look terrible at night.

 

I would use a couple of soft wash (frost lens) floods to light "pom poms" from below and from different angles. Done right it will be a subtle detailed effect. Uplight and downlight the palm as per Tommy's suggestion above.

 

Judging from the size of these shrubs - what wattage should I plan for? Do you know if- I use two fixtures should they be positioned -front and back - or - leftside and rightside. Thank You - I would like to have an idea of where to start in case the homeowner is outside watching me as I set up the demo. Everything else is pretty straight forward. I appreciate your time and thoughts.
Have A Great Day!!
Bobbi

 

I would trim each pom-pom a bit tighter for the inside space/uplight idea to work well. it will look best lit from above, a narrow 15 degree will cut the glare, but I would still do a hex louver as the best effect for the two poms also send glare straight towards car windows.

 

I would do 2 each, front right and front left, and try one in the middle straight up right against the trunk. I would start with 10 watt and depending on the ambient light levels around you, maybe down to a 5 watt or up to a 20 watt. James is correct in using a frosted lens as well. You can also under volt the higher wattage a little if you find yourself in between wattages.

 

My first thought was that I'd try to down light them. But I've never worked with a palm that small as a down light position and don't know how well a downlight could hide in that little palm. It also offers so little throw that it will be difficult to bring the softness out of the downlight.

I've lit some round boxwoods - 3 to 5 food diameter and uplight looked terrible... much too hot and not enough distribution. There was no downlight position available. The best solution I found was to silhouette them by flooding the wall behind. The photo below was the result. Clearly my situation then was different from what Bobbi is dealing with here.

Is that row of hedge hiding a walkway? It looks like there may be some opportunity to light the interior of the area and create some additional sense of depth with some area/pathlights. Add some soft uplight on the facade to define the amount of depth and to make the composition dynamic as the viewer walks or drives by.

It may end up a little mysterious... but that might be good.

Good luck, Tom

 

Thank You Tom & David for your thoughts, they are much appreciated.

I set up a small demo on the property tonight - all thoughts and suggestions are requested and welcome.

the only fixtures I have to demo(the pom-pom shrubs) with are:
Unique's Nova w/frosted dome lens - shrub on the right - one fixture has 20w and the other has 35w - I really liked the way this looked - i pretty much placed them directly underneath in the center left to right.
&
Nightscaping's softliter w/18w wedge base lamp - This is under the shrub on the left and I did not like the way it looks as much as the one on the right and I am not sure if it's because I only had one fixture or not.

So, my question is this - are the nova's comparable to how the stellar will look if I use two per shrub? Thank You all for your time and valuable input.