As the evenings draw in, nocturnal spectacles take over: Bonfire Night, fireworks, Christmas markets and more. Annual repetition can render such events formulaic, but at Picton Castle in central Pembrokeshire the October weekend event Secret Light Garden brought a startlingly fresh eye to an established country house and its grounds.

It remains to be seen whether this extravaganza of light-and-sound show, open-air sculpture and craft fair can be repeated, but it certainly constituted a roaring success for its organisers, Narberth-based Wired-West and Dai Evans, Director of the Picton Castle Trust, attracting more than 2,000 visitors in total.

For two evenings over a mid-October weekend, the castle's grounds and courtyard played host to a feast of cultural 'happenings' – from sculpture and crafts to lightshows, food, drink and even theatre. Visual artists from Pembrokeshire and further afield contributed nocturnal delights, dotted amongst the extensive gardens. Michelle Cain's 6-metre tall willow sculptures Fox n Fiddle and Fox n Banjo loomed out of a thicket, while metal trees and a 3-metre high chandelier by aluminium artist Dawny Tootes complemented the lawns and formal landscaping of the redesignated 'Glimmering Wall Garden' in a startlingly contemporary way. A typically provocative 'rubbish' sculpture by Buzz Knapp-Fisher of Us-energy Ltd trust dominated the 'Luminous Lawn Gallery', as children cast vast shadows on the castle walls amongst magiclantern-style projections courtesy of Wired–West lighting designers Ashley Calvert, Jennie Caldwell and Gareth Dean.

At the other end of the scale in size terms, Whitlandbased ceramicist Tom Fisher's luminous high-fired porcelain pots hung and spread around the trees of the walled garden, glowing like the invitation to some private nocturnal ritual. Breaking away from the purely visual, sound artists Karen Lauke and Helen Newall had created The Whispering Tree, a 'soundscape' piece exploring the Mabinogion story of Blodeuwedd, the woman made of flowers who is turned into an owl as a punishment for her infidelity.

Perhaps the cleverest aspect of the Secret Light Garden, however, was the way in which the organisers knowingly exploited existing perceptions of the castle and its grounds. For this reviewer, this approach produced the most striking aspects of the whole experience. The entire weekend was 'trailed' beforehand via a dedicated website in order to give potential visitors a taste of the delights to come. On the night itself, arriving cars were directed to the rarely used 'official' entrance to the grounds, and progressed ceremonially along an avenue lined with upended flaming logs (installed by head gardener, Rod Milne) as if part of some compelling pagan ritual.

Once inside the castle courtyard, the cosily autumnal scene of stalls selling exotic foods and mulled wine was knocked askew by the presence of a swirling light projection on the tower opposite (a taste of things to come in the gardens). In an outbuilding, a mysterious mortuary-type lantern installation must have reminded more than one grizzled art fan of East Berlin's decadent grunge-based Tacheles arts centre, housed for many years in the sinister crevices of an abandoned department store in the former Prussian capital.

As if to complete the sense of dislocation, participants in Pembrokeshire's own 'Pint-sized Plays' festival staged 10-minute drama pieces in impromptu style amongst the crowds – one of them 'erupting' between the innocuous looking couple sipping mulled wine at the open-air table next to ARTicle's reporter! This was a masterstroke of cross-cultural connecting, linking in to the drama festival sponsored/hosted by Pembrokeshire

County Council and Fishguard's Theatr Gwaun and now in its third year. It even persuaded this reviewer to forgo a second visit to the Secret Light Garden in order to catch all ten playlets at Theatr Gwaun on the Saturday evening – a real countywide cultural overload.

ARTicle (Issue 9, Winter 2010)