Gardeners in Málaga
A city patio isn’t a small garden. It’s something else
Maintenance, pruning and irrigation across the whole city, from Teatinos to Pedregalejo. Written quote within 24 hours.
- Patios, roof terraces and gardens with no vehicle access
- Mature trees: conservation pruning, not cutting back
- Green waste removal always included
Your garden in Málaga
Tell us what you need and we’ll give you a price within 24 hours.
What you need to know
In the city, light and access call the shots
Outside the city, a garden gets all the sun it wants and has a lorry parked right next to it. Here neither can be taken for granted, and they’re precisely what decides what can be planted and how much it costs to maintain.
The light you get isn’t what you think
Between party walls, the sun lasts as long as it lasts. A south-facing patio may get three hours if the building opposite blocks the rest, and that isn’t “not much sun”: it’s a different list of plants. The worst that can happen isn’t that they die, it’s that they get by without ever being right and you find out two seasons later. You count the real light before you buy anything.
Whatever is cut has to be taken out
A pruned crown takes up far more room on the ground than it seemed to up in the tree, and in the city there isn’t always somewhere to leave the vehicle or a way through. That’s why we ask about access before the cut, not after: getting the waste out is planned just like the pruning. Carrying it out by hand through a building entrance isn’t a surprise if it was allowed for; if it wasn’t, it turns into another half day.
Before going up
An old tree isn’t cut back, it’s conserved
In the villa neighbourhoods there are trees that have stood longer than the house next to them, and with them pruning stops being maintenance and becomes surgery. You’re not after a shape: the dead wood comes off, whatever is a hazard is lightened, and the crown the tree has already built is respected.
The reason is physiological and not up for negotiation. A young tree closes its wounds; an old one doesn’t, not fully. Every large cut in mature wood is an open door to rot, and the result doesn’t show the same year: it shows when a main limb gives way ten years later.
Before touching a tree like that, we check whether it’s catalogued or protected. If it is, the work follows a set procedure, and that procedure doesn’t start with cutting.
Where we work
Neighbourhoods of Málaga city
A city that ranges from the townhouse with a lawn to the patio with no soil.
Teatinos and the west
The newest part and the easiest to work in: townhouses with their own gardens, communities with green areas and proper lawns. There’s plenty of sun and you can park, so the work here is much like any urbanisation on the coast.
El Limonar and Pedregalejo
Villas with mature gardens and trees that have stood in the same place for decades. Narrow streets, walls and entrances a lorry can’t get through. It’s the area where who climbs the tree matters most, because here a bad cut shows for twenty years.
Churriana and around the airport
Flat, with bigger plots and land that has been market garden for generations. Less patio and more ground: clearance, fruit trees and irrigation. It’s more like inland than the rest of the city.
The centre and the Ensanche
Here there’s often no ground at all: there’s a patio, a roof terrace and a terrace. Everything is in pots or planters, the compost wears out and watering decides almost everything. Few square metres, and a big difference between doing it properly and doing it for the sake of it.
If your neighbourhood isn’t on the list, ask us: we cover the whole city.
Common questions
Questions about Málaga
You’re based in Mijas. Do you really work in Málaga city?
Yes, and it’s worth explaining how. It’s about thirty kilometres of motorway, so we don’t drive up to the city for half an hour’s work: we group the city jobs on the same days. In practice, regular maintenance works just as it does on the coast; something urgent from one day to the next depends on how the week looks. We tell you which day we can be there before you agree to anything, not after.
My patio only gets a couple of hours of sun. Can I have anything green?
Yes, but with a different list of plants. The classic mistake is buying at the garden centre whatever does well for a neighbour on the coast and expecting it to cope between four walls. With two or three hours of direct light there are shade plants that do perfectly well, and others that don’t quite die but are never right, which is worse because you don’t find out until the second year. The first step is to count the real hours of sun the patio gets, and that’s done by looking at the patio, not the catalogue.
There’s nowhere to stop in my street. How do you get the green waste out?
By working it out beforehand, not discovering it on the day of the job. We ask how you get in, whether there’s a lift, whether the entrance has a step and how far away the vehicle can be left. That decides whether materials are carried up by hand, whether the waste has to come out in sacks or whether it’s better to split the job over two days. Removal is always included in the quote; what changes with the access is the time, and that’s exactly what gets measured on the visit.
I have a big, old tree. Can it be pruned without ruining it?
It can, but it’s a different kind of pruning. A mature tree isn’t trimmed into shape: the dead branches come off, whatever is a hazard is lightened, and it keeps the crown it already has. Making large cuts in old wood is one of the few things in this trade that can’t be put right, because the tree doesn’t close over the wound the way a young one would. Before going up we check whether the tree is catalogued or protected, which in neighbourhoods with old trees happens more often than people think.
Advice from your local gardener
October in Málaga
The best time of year to plant
Here you plant in autumn, not spring. The soil is still warm from the summer but the air no longer punishes, so the plant puts down roots all through the winter and reaches the next summer with its root system in place. Whatever goes in in May spends its first August suffering.
It’s also when the rain does part of the work: after the first storms you can cut the watering back a lot, but don’t switch it off altogether. A dry October is perfectly possible in Málaga, and a newly planted hedge won’t forgive a week without water.
And before the cold sets in, check the drippers one by one. After a summer working flat out there’s always one blocked with lime. You won’t notice it in winter… until June.
Shall we talk about your garden in Málaga?
Tell us about the access and how many hours of sun it gets. With that we can already tell you something useful, and without it we can’t. You can call or WhatsApp us in English.