Case study

Villa and Lime Avenue, St John's Wood

Roofline, both gate piers and eight limes close-wound to the first branch — a scheme built around the arrival rather than the house.

St John's WoodRoofline, gate piers, eight limesWarm white close-wound tree wrap

White villa in St John's Wood seen through open gates at blue hour, roofline and stone gate piers lit and an avenue of lime trees wrapped in warm white lights

Property: Detached villa
Area: St John's Wood, NW8
Lights used: 8 trees, 240m of wrap
On site: Two days, three fitters

Schemes like this run £4,000–£6,500 for the season

The brief

A detached villa in St John's Wood, NW8, with an in-and-out gravel drive and eight pleached limes lining it. The house is handsome but set well back — from the road you barely see it. The brief, once we walked it, wrote itself: light the arrival, not the architecture.

What we installed

Warm white festoon along the main roofline, one line only
Both stone gate piers picked out and topped with fresh garland
Eight lime trees close-wound from base to first branch, 240m of wrap
Low-level wash across the front planting

How many lights does it take to wrap a tree properly?

More than people expect, and the number that matters is spacing, not quantity. We wrap at roughly a palm's width between turns on the trunk and open it out into the primary limbs — on these limes that came to about 30m of string per tree. Wrap looser and the tree looks like it has been bandaged; wrap tighter and you lose the bark texture that makes a wrapped tree beautiful in the first place. Every string here is on a clip-free wrap so nothing girdles the trunk as it moves.

Why it works

A long approach is a sequence, not a picture. You pass the lit piers, then eight trees in rhythm, then the house resolves at the end of it. Because the roofline is a single restrained line, the house reads as the destination rather than another competing light source.

Same treatment, your house