Sorry to be catty but be wary when taking advice from certain users. Refer to this thread as an example: "o Hardwire a chandelier". I am tired of seeing advice which is given as authoritative when it is wrong. Dimming from more than one location is simply a matter of preference in most cases but also of convenience. Texasredhead, if a light is turned to a dim glow where one can barely see should one have to walk across a room to find a dimmer to turn it up if there is a dimmer closer by? Dimming from more than one location is possible. Any reputable electrician would know that. The dimmers communicate with one another through leads on the dimmers which are linked together through the switch wiring. Tklahr, try different brands of bulbs rather than just different types. Also look for bulbs which have filament supports. Many bulbs simply have a filament stretched between two arms with nothing else and that lends itself to vibration. As for flickering, if the wiring is all sound it may be an issue of a heavy load somewhere in your home causing the flickering.

What type of lamp and ballast (if any) does the thing have?

Yes: removal of existing growth slows overall size increase. It really is true with shrubs as with other things that if you take part of it away you then have less afterward. This is because faster growing shoots made in response to pruning cuts do not immediately restore the total plant volume that would have been present if the pruning had not occurred. Let alone does the speed of their growth result in a bigger top than would have been present at the same time otherwise. Once the previous size is restored then size increase resumes. What the cutting back produced was an interruption, a delay in a larger size being achieved. And not an acceleration. The main reason for giving your box a top and sides every year would be to produce a formal effect. With each plant intended to be made thereby to appear as an architectural element.

Are the lights on a dimmer? It might be producing lots of powerline "hash" -- that is, radiating noise of various frequencies well into the radio frequency range back into the powerline. Presumably your cooktop is unusually sensitive to such noise. Another possibility is that the power supplies in the lights themselves are the source of the noise. Or, it could be the combination of this particular dimmer and these particular lights. If you have the lights on a dimmer, I would first try replacing the dimmer with a conventional snap switch, and see if the noise abates or disappears. If it does, try changing to a different brand or type of dimmer. If they're not on a dimmer, I'd try disconnecting all the lights from power, then adding them back in one by one, to see if any single light is the source. Line powered LED lights have switching power supplies built in, to convert 120vac (or 240vac in other countries) to the lower voltage that LEDs need. It's possible that one of your light units has defective noise filtering in its power supply. If they all make noise, it would be pretty surprising, because the page you linked to seems to say that they meet regulatory requirements. I'm not familiar with Canada's, though, so I don't know how complete their compliance is. If the easy fixes above don't work, you may be stuck with either replacing all the lights, or changing the cooktop. One possible "quick fix" before going that drastic route might be to install a noise filter. I would wire it in ahead of the lights, maybe in a cellar junction box. I've never had to do this, so I don't have a specific recommendation. However, a quick web search turned up this one, which is supposed to be wired in ahead of noisy devices when they're interfering with an X10 home automation system. Others here may have their own recommendations for noise filters. Please let us know how it goes.