Setting up garden lights is not one of the easiest things to do. Many people just install a couple of wall lights around the outside of their home to solve matters and even if it is not what 
they would want to do, it is just more convenient.
Another reason is that most people do not want to take the trouble of pulling wires 10 or 20 yards into their garden so that they can have lights around the periphery. Not only is this a mite on the expensive side, there is also the small problem with a voltage drop which means that you will have to install a transformer to jack up the voltage.
One of the easiest ways to get around this problem is to install low voltage garden lights. If you want really bright light then you can always install a couple of halogen flood lights on the roof of your home, but most of us do not want such bright light. We just want something that makes our garden look nice and even a low voltage garden light can do this.
In fact nowadays you even get solar powered garden lights so that you need not worry about wires at all. Unless you are getting driveway lights that you bury in the ground, most of the others come with a sharpened stake that you plant in the ground and as long as the lamp receives about 6 hrs of sunlight every day, it will give you hours of light at night. They even have an auto-on feature that switches them on when the ambient light drops below a certain level.
These solar powered garden lights are also very cheap and you can get pretty decent ones starting around $30. This is a little more expensive than any light you would be installing for the outside of your home, but then if you calculate the savings on wiring and labor, you will find that it is actually pretty cost effective. If you already have wires strung then going in for the low voltage garden lights are a better idea because the cost of these lamps are much lower than the solar lamps.