A Cumbrian lighting specialist has illuminated the world’s largest treehouse restaurant for the festive season.

Marl International, which is based at the Marl Business Hub in Ulverston, has supplied 13,000 LEDs to adorn the structure at the Alnwick Garden, in Northumberland.

Marl oversaw the whole process of decorating the attraction, from planning to installation.

It includes 130 metres of LED fairylights, 80 decking spotlights, and more than 30 LED uplighters which light nine trees in unison in a vast array of colours.

“The tree spots are all connected and all change colour together in any shade of a full spectrum of colours, so you can theme them with an event or a particular time of year,” said Katie Higgins, Marl’s core-opto manager.

The brief to the Marl team from the Duchess of Northumberland was to maintain the magic by keeping the source of the lights out of sight.

“The way we have lit the trees you see the different colours on the trees themselves, and not the light source; they look fantastic,” said Katie.

“We have illuminated a 20 metre walkway to the restaurant with cool white icicle lights and inside the restaurant we have used warm white lights.

“We have been working on installing the lights in all weathers and finished it towards the end of November in time for the festive season. We are really pleased with how it looks.

“The duchess has told us she is really impressed with it and has asked us to work on more areas next year when The Alnwick Garden has its big 20-year anniversary celebrations.”

Marl’s association with the Duchess and the Alnwick Garden goes back to 2012 when it was asked to create the light show for its Grand Cascade 120-jet water fountain.

“We created that whole programme and made sure it all worked in time with the music, it was very specialised technology,” said Katie.

Marl managing director Adrian Rawlinson said: “We enjoy working with the duchess and all the team at Alnwick. They are great fun to work with. It is also exciting illuminating some of the most impressive landscape features in the UK and turning the vision from the duchess into reality, where we design the lighting scheme, often make customised lighting systems and software, and take it all the way through programming, installation and commissioning - a full turn-key solution.”

Mark Brassell, director at the Alnwick Garden, said: “The Duchess of Northumberland is clear that we must always make sure everyone we do business with is of the highest quality. When the duchess had the idea of the lighting at the treehouse we wanted to partner with the best lighting specialists we could.”