Second Nature Landscapes Presents Second Nature Lighting

June 2019

Writer // Janelle Morrison         Photography // Laura Arick and submitted

You’ve probably driven past a home in the Carmel and/or Zionsville area and thought to yourself, “Now that is a beautifully lit home,” and there’s a good chance that the landscape or holiday lighting was designed and installed by Zionsville resident Cory Owens and his team at Second Nature Lighting. If you did some holiday shopping out at Clay Terrace in Carmel last season, you most certainly saw their work.

Twenty Year Landscaping Business Expands Into Lighting

Owens has been designing and maintaining immaculate landscapes for over 20 years. Many of you may already be clients of Owens’ with his Zionsville-based landscape company, Second Nature Landscapes, also based in Zionsville. He and his team have launched an additional arm of his business that offers the same high-level customer service, design and execution that has earned him an impeccable reputation in his industry but focuses on landscape, holiday and event lighting.

Second Nature Lighting Is Launched

We would like to introduce you to Second Nature Lighting. If you are looking to light up your landscaping, home, outdoor living areas or are thinking about hosting a special event at your home and want to deck it out with state-of-the-art RGB lighting, Owens and his team of skilled installers are your go-to specialists. And while summer break has just begun, it’s never too late to start thinking about budgeting for your Christmas lighting needs.

“We originated as a landscape company, and we’ve been doing landscape lighting, Christmas lighting and all sorts of things, but as time has gone on, there are different types of lighting that we do,” Owens explained. “So, landscape, special event, wedding, graduation parties and Christmas lighting has built up to the point we’re trying to separate the lighting side of our company from the landscaping side.”

Owens continued, “Landscaping is just a broad term for a lot of things that we do within our landscape company. On the lighting side of things, we work with other landscape companies, pool companies and event planners. We don’t want to diversify too broadly from our roots as we’re branching this side of our business out, so we’re keeping the Second Nature name and keeping the Second Nature logo relatively consistent with the Second Nature Landscapes’ logo.”

Owens has been a resident and business owner in Zionsville a long time, and his brand is well established on the landscaping side.

“I’ve been in Zionsville since the mid-’90s on the landscape side,” he said. “I actually worked for a company that I purchased and rebranded in 2006. We don’t want our customers to be confused and say, ‘So now you’re just a lighting company?’ and lose that cohesiveness that we’ve built with the communities we work in. We’re letting people know that we’re not abandoning our landscape company, but as time has progressed, it has become necessary to segregate the two while remaining under the same umbrella.”

Owens is savvy to the reality that people who are looking for Christmas lighting or indoor or outdoor event lighting are probably not going to immediate think of looking up a landscape company for those needs. They will look up event lighting or holiday lighting.

“Many people just don’t know where to look,” Owens said. “And if they do look up landscape companies, there are many out there that don’t do event and/or Christmas lighting.”

Second Nature Lighting just recently launched a new website where it features all its services from landscape lighting, Christmas décor, RGB lighting and event lighting.

“We do our best to brighten up where we’re at in Zionsville and Carmel,” Owens stated. “Our shop is on the edge of Zionsville near Carmel. Our ideal place to work is within our own backyard [Boone and Hamilton counties].

Supporting local doesn’t just look like supporting a restaurant or a store. It’s the service industry companies that are in our communities that need our support too.

So, if you’re thinking about hosting an indoor or outdoor event or need to retrofit your existing landscape lighting to LED outdoor lighting, now would be a great time to contact Owens or Isaac Beverstock, account manager at Second Nature Lighting.

“Isaac’s been with us for two and a half years,” Owens said. “He has a passion for that side of the business. It’s kind of his wheelhouse.”

Beverstock looks at every project as a “blank canvas” and listens to what the customers want before inserting his recommendations.

“Whether it’s a big hall that were doing for a wedding or an outdoor venue, we have a lot of experience with indoor lighting as well as outdoor lighting,” Beverstock stated. “How we do the design is no different. We go in and discuss what areas would look the best [lit up] and what areas or certain architectural features need to be highlighted.”

When asked what type of event lighting is most popular, he replied, “A lot of people like the bistro lights for outdoor events, and if there’s trees at the venue, they like lights on the trees. We talk color scheme, and for corporate events, we can incorporate their brand colors into the lighting. If it’s a wedding, warm white or soft colors are popular.”

Beverstock went on to explain that with RGB technology, most systems can be controlled via an app on a smartphone.

“There are different scales as to whether it can be manipulated by an app on a phone or by a professional power board,” he explained. “A lot of them can run off batteries too, so you have cords running throughout the home or venue.”

Christmas and Holiday Décor Lighting

“Christmas is the big holiday, but we get some people who want Halloween lighting too,” Owens said. “There’s ways even within [year-round] landscape lighting to have color-changing lighting that is warm white throughout the year, but people can literally change it on their app for Halloween lights or red, white and blue for the Fourth of July or green for St. Patrick’s Day. From a traditional Christmas decorating perspective, there is obviously a higher cost involved because of the install/takedown that is involved.”

Owens explained that his Christmas light arm, Christmas Decor, is part of a franchise made up of 430 franchises across the U.S. and Canada. His franchise is the only one that has been in central Indiana for as long as it has, and with that comes a depth and breadth of knowledgeable resources.

“As a veteran franchisee of over 20 years, I can say with certainty, there are not many people that have as much experience as we have, but if something comes up that we haven’t ever come across, we have a vast network of people that have seen it, so we have that advanced knowledge.” He continued, “There’s a lot of people starting to do Christmas lighting—it’s the nature of the beast—but a lot of them are fly-by-nights and not necessarily treating it as its own business. It’s just a way for them to bring in extra revenue if hasn’t snowed or a way to keep their people on staff.”

Christmas lighting is more than a way to create revenue for Owens and his staff. They sincerely enjoy the season and what their creations do for families and onlookers when they flip the lights on for the duration of the holiday season.

“We really love the Christmas season,” Beverstock concurred. “Our guys actually look forward to the Christmas season.”

Owens added, “We start lighting that last week of September and will probably start installing it even sooner this year.”

The Second Nature Lighting Customer Experience

“Communication with the customer is foremost,” Owens emphasized. “We stay in constant contact with people, and I am available to my customers directly though my cell phone. We always want to hear what the customer wants first, and we’ll make our recommendation from there based off our principles, what can be achieved and understanding their budget. Sometimes those may not always be exactly what the customer wants because what they want may not be the cost-effective way or it may not represent who we are as a company. For instance, if we have someone who wants Christmas lights and they just want us to wrap as many lights [as we can] around a pole or something—it’s not a clean look. We won’t do one wrap that goes around because that’s not how we light homes, businesses or anything else. When we light it, we light it fully. That’s the look we want.”

LED Warranty and Maintenance

According to Owens, LED has taken much of the service work out of the industry, but he stressed that people still have to maintain their outdoor landscape systems.

“If you put lights around shrubs, eventually the shrub is going to grow over the light,” Owens said. “If you have other companies out there doing service work, the lenses can get dirty. We offer a maintenance service where we come out once or twice a year, trim around the lights, readjust them if the dogs have run around the beds and knocked the fixtures sideways.”

As part of the installation protocol, Owens and his team will leave extra slack on the cords so that when the fixture has to be relocated because a tree or shrub has grown in its path, they can come in and move it without having to make cuts or install a new cord.

“From a warranty standpoint, our lighting systems are hands-off for 10 years once we put it in,” Owens said. “The light fixtures we use are guaranteed for life, as are the transformers.”

Don’t leave your business in the dark. Second Nature Lighting also specializes in storefront and other business façade lighting needs. An outdoor lighting system is a proven way to attract customers to your retail and restaurant locations, and it also encourages them to stay longer and spend more money.

Second Nature Lighting has been brightening the Indy area for nearly 20 years. Light up your home, landscape, holidays, events or businesses with a customized lighting system by Second Nature Lighting! Visit Second Nature Lighting’s website at secondnaturelighting.com or give them a call at (317) 873-5278.