Hourly gardener on the Costa del Sol
One day’s work and it’s done
No contract, no tie-in and no need for you to be there. A fixed quote before we start.
- We agree the job and the price, and that’s the price
- Photos of the result if you’re not there
- Green waste removal agreed in advance
Tell us what needs doing
Two photos of the garden and the address are enough for us to give you a price.
What people ask for
Four jobs that get done in one visit
They aren’t four different services: they’re the four ways the same call usually reaches us. They all have an end date, which is what sets them apart from maintenance.
The catch-up
The garden that’s gone months without anyone: mowing, edges, cutting back whatever has spread over the path, and a clean-up. It’s the job that changes a plot most in a single day.
One specific job
Taking out a dead shrub, cutting down the hedge that now blocks the view, emptying a flowerbed, planting what you’ve brought. Jobs with a beginning and an end that don’t need a contract behind them.
The visit before you arrive
Getting the house presentable for an arrival: yours, or your guests’. We agree the date and the garden is ready the day before, not on the day.
The check afterwards
Going to see what has happened after a storm or after a whole summer shut up, and reporting back with photos. Sometimes the answer is that nothing needs doing, and that’s fine too.
What’s different on this coast
Here the client is hardly ever there
In a village inland, a gardener rings the bell and the owner opens the door. Here, a good share of the houses are holiday homes or rentals, and whoever calls is doing it from another country, often in a language other than Spanish, about a garden they haven’t seen for four months.
That isn’t a logistical detail: it changes the whole job. It means sorting out beforehand things that elsewhere get sorted on the spot (who opens the gate, whether there’s a code, whether the outside water is off, where the fuse box is) because there’s nobody to ask once you’re there. A key that doesn’t turn up turns a morning’s work into a wasted trip, and somebody pays for that.
It also means the state of the garden is discovered on arrival, not before. What was “a mow” on the phone can turn out to be a plot nobody has touched since May, with knee-high grass and the hedge over the path. That’s why we ask for photos: not out of mistrust, but so that the price we give you is the price you pay.
And it means there has to be a report. If you’re not there, you don’t see the finished work, so we show it to you with before-and-after photos. It’s the only way a visit to an empty house can be checked.
About the price
What makes a one-off visit expensive isn’t the garden
On a one-off job, much of the cost comes before anyone picks up a tool. Travel and access weigh as much as the work itself, and that’s why two identical gardens can cost different amounts.
- How long it’s gone untouched. It weighs heavily. A garden on a regular cycle is brought up to date in a few hours. One left for a whole year isn’t a mow: it’s clearing, removal and several passes.
- How you get in. Whether the van can reach the plot, or the tools have to go down twenty steps and the cuttings come back up by hand. In hillside urbanisations this changes the job more than the size does.
- What happens to the cuttings. Chipping them and leaving them on the plot, stacking them, or loading them up and disposing of them. Those are three different things, and only one of them costs nothing in transport.
- Whether there’s water and electricity. In a closed-up house sometimes there isn’t, and some jobs can’t be done that day without them. Knowing beforehand saves going twice.
With photos and the address we give you a fixed price in writing. If, when we arrive, the garden isn’t the one in the photos, we tell you before we start and you decide. How each service is measured is explained in gardening prices.
So you’re not oversold
When a one-off visit is worth it, and when it isn’t
A one-off visit is the right choice if the garden is low-maintenance, if you don’t come often, or if what you want is to sort out one specific thing. It stops being worth it when the garden is back to how it was before your next trip: then you end up paying for several catch-ups instead of care that never lets it get out of hand.
There’s no number that separates the two, because it depends on what you’ve planted and how often you come. What we can do is tell you which case you’re in once we’ve seen the garden. If it’s the second, there’s seasonal garden maintenance; if it’s the first, this is all you need.
Where we work
Travel counts, so check your area
On a one-off job, distance matters more than on a contract. Each page explains how we work in that town.
Worth reading
If you don’t come often, this saves you visits
Why here you plant in autumn, not in spring
Spring is a good time to plant where the enemy is the cold. Here the enemy is July, and that turns the whole calendar upside down.
Read itWhat to plant here so you’re not watering all summer
August is ending, you look at the garden and the question asks itself. The answer has less to do with the list of plants than with where you put them and what you do in the first year.
Read itWinter-flowering plants: here it’s the other flowering season
Here winter isn’t the garden’s dead season: a group of plants flowers just as the rest stops. Which they are, where they don’t work, and the light that keeps a poinsettia green.
Read itBougainvillea not flowering: it’s too well looked after
It’s huge, green and lovely, and won’t produce a single flower. It’s almost never lacking anything: it lacks nothing, and for this plant that takes away the urge to flower.
Read itBrown in September doesn’t always mean dead
Half a dozen brown plants and the temptation to pull them all out before replanting. Here that’s done in October, not now: several of them aren’t dead, they’re dormant.
Read itWhen to plant tulips on the Costa del Sol, and why they go in the fridge first
Planted in October, as inland, they give leaves and a low flower or none. Here you buy them now, give them weeks in the fridge and plant them in December.
Read itStrelitzia nicolai in the garden: what the houseplant guides don’t tell you
Guides treat it as a living-room plant. In a coastal garden, with 0.2 days of frost a year, it becomes a clump of trunks 6 to 8 metres tall.
Read it
Common questions
What people ask us most
Do I need to be at home?
No need, and in a holiday home it’s normal for you not to be there. What is needed is for access to be sorted out beforehand: who opens up, whether the gate has a code, whether the outside water and electricity are on. That gets discussed when we quote, not on the day of the job. When we finish, we send photos of how it’s been left.
Is there a minimum number of hours or a minimum job?
Yes, there’s a minimum, because travelling and bringing the tools costs the same for half an hour as for half a day. What it is depends on where the house is, so we tell you when we give the price, not afterwards. If what you’re asking for isn’t enough to justify the visit, we’ll tell you that too.
I just want it tidied up once. Are you going to push a contract on me?
No. A one-off job is a one-off job and it’s charged as one. What we will do, if we see it, is tell you how long it’ll take to get back to how it was: there are gardens where one visit a year is enough and others where after six weeks you can’t tell we came. That’s information for you to decide with, not a sales pitch.
Do you take the cuttings away?
Yes, and it’s worth saying so when you ask for the quote, because it changes the figure. A mow leaves very little; pruning that’s years overdue fills a trailer and has to be disposed of. If you’d rather it was chipped and left on the plot, that can be done too, and it works out differently.
Arriving next week?
Send us two photos of the garden and the address. We’ll tell you what can be done before you arrive and how much it costs. You can call or WhatsApp us in English.