Janet Lennox Moyer, FIALD, AOLP COLD

Janet Lennox Moyer, FIALD, COLD, an internationally known lighting designer and recipient of many design awards, lived and worked on the West Coast for nearly 20 years before moving back to the East Coast in 1997. She has judged lighting competitions, been published extensively in magazines, newspapers, and books. She has taught all over the world since serving as teaching assistant for her undergraduate lighting course at Michigan State University. Ms. Moyer’s practice has included interior, commercial, and residential lighting, but her emphasis shifted to landscape lighting in 1983.

Jan taught landscape lighting at UC Berkeley and Rutgers University in the Landscape Continuing Education departments during the 1980s and the 1990s. Jan studied plant identification, plant propagation and pathology, garden design and layout at UC Berkeley, Merritt College, and local Extension courses for years. Jan became interested in plants while in college at Michigan State University, while working in the greenhouses. She developed a cactus and succulent greenhouse and garden on her property in Northern California.

Jan moved to New York to teach at the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  At her current 5+ acre property in upstate New York, called Saluki Park, she continues the work of the original property horticulturalist plants-woman, Helen Frane, who provided the garden bones in the 1920s. Jan spent her first 10 years primarily cleaning up the neglect of the owners between her and Mrs. Frane, a span of 30 years. During that time and since, she has developed new garden areas, expanded garden settings and planted many groupings of plants including a birch grove, a larch grove, a viburnum collection, several hydrangea collections, a new grouping of beeches to replace some that had been removed….the projects are never-ending.

Her projects include landscape lighting of Levi Plaza (San Francisco); the Detroit Civic Center; several city blocks in downtown Tacoma, Washington for Pierce Transit, incorporating a 200 foot long ‘Waterwall’; interior lighting at the Skywalker Ranch (Nicasio, CA); and for a palace in Abu Dhabi; both interior and landscape lighting at the Far Niente Winery (Oakville, CA); a resort in Safaga, Egypt; and many special residential properties across the nation. Recently completed projects include: several areas of both the Chicago Botanic Gardens and the Olbrich Botanical Gardens, in Madison, Wisconsin; a Palm Aboretum and Conservatory in Northern California; private homes and gardens from the Hollywood Hills to Maine, from Montana to Bermuda; several estates in New York, and an abandoned marble quarry in Vermont.

Jan is the author of the internationally acclaimed The Landscape Lighting Book. Originally published in 1992 with the second edition released by John Wiley in March 2005, the third edition, released in July 2013, integrates the disruptive technology LED how it is changing lighting and what to look for in the future.

Jan met George Gruel, graphic designer and photographer, during the last month of the book revision effort in 2004. George helped her with Mac artwork and Jan asked him to photograph a project for her. They got married in 2005 and have embarked on a series of collaborative books of his photos of her work. The first, called She Paints with Light, covers the years of 2004 to 2008. Other volumes to come will look back at the earlier years from 1976 onward and the mockups done by attendees to The Landscape Lighting Institute.

Jan founded the International Landscape Lighting Institute (illi) in 2010 – she began a semester long course on Landscape Lighting for the Landscape Architecture Extension program in the early 1990s and took it to Rutgers until RPI’s Light Research Center offered her to make it a hands-on course. That is how the illi Intensive Course took the form that it is still offered in today. illi’s home officially became the University of Oklahoma in January 2017.

Jan will continue to share her knowledge, expertise, and experience in these 5-day, 4 night courses. Each day includes morning lectures, afternoon workshop sessions, and evening mockups. In 2017, Jan will take the course to Tokamachi, Japan, the birth city of Hiroshi Kira, HK Lighting.

 In 2013, illi completed a permanent landscape lighting exhibition – designed by 31 designers working with one Manufacturer that supplied the equipment for one of 10 areas. It took two sessions one in June- Power Distribution and the other in September-Fixture Installation and Aiming session to complete the Exhibition. The first of many tours took place in 2014. Two other permanent installation projects have been completed by Jan and illi, one a park at Rio Verde, AZ and one at a park in Ridgewood, NJ.

Jan is committed to sharing her knowledge and striving to raise the bar for the landscape lighting industry, as she would love everyone to be able to enjoy our planets’ garden spaces after dark. Jan and her husband George Gruel relocated to Arizona, with Jan and Brooke, Luminae continuing to be headquartered in Glen Rock, NJ.  

Downloads :
Curriculum Vitae  (PDF)
Speaker Bio  (PDF)