The Light Yard, a British and family run sustainable lighting business, is back at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show (CFS) for the third time with their brand-new horticultural styled collection.
This year, the Green Agenda at CFS stated that all applications from exhibitors had to provide information on their sustainability and type of material use.
Jeff said: “To the best of our knowledge, we are the only company in the world right now that is manufacturing sustainable landscape lighting using bamboo.”
Classed as a type of grass, Bamboo is an extremely sustainable material, and a great alternative to using hard wood, according to Jeff. As a natural product that grows quickly, bamboo is strong, durable, and offers a beautiful finish. “We were looking for a sustainable option like this for quite some time.
“Originally, we used an exotic hardwood called Arauco, and though it was absolutely brilliant for the outdoors, it was not as sustainable as we wanted it to be. It takes about 80 years for these trees to grow, and once chopped down people are meant to replant them. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to happen too much.”
Jeff said The Light Yard is the only lighting company at Chelsea that has responded to the Green Agenda. “We’re proud to be helping push this and lead the way, but it is surprising that more companies aren’t doing this, especially as sustainability is such a big talking point currently,” he shared.
Perhaps many companies have a lot of stock to use up before they can think about moving to different material use, Jeff suggested. “In some ways, we’re lucky that we’re a small company as we don’t have to be so stuck in our ways. We are able turn something around quickly and make something new very easily, whereas larger companies often have a much longer process to go through to do this.”
For Jeff, Chelsea provided a great source of inspiration in The Light Yard’s latest designs. He added: “We’ve manufactured Moso Bamboo exterior bollards and wall lights in our workshop for the show that take the form of cheese plants and leaves.”
However, the future of sustainable lighting revolves not just around the material, Jeff explained. “The actual lighting is important too. We know bamboo is the way forward in terms of wood replacement, but as technology becomes better and better, there could be an important switch from LED to solar.”
As sustainable products and companies grow in importance, Jeff has noticed an increase in the amount of interest in their lighting – just recently the company installed stylish lighting at Raymond Blanc’s pop-up restaurant, which Jeff perceived as a real kudos.
Find Jeff at The Light Yard exhibitor stand at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this week.
