Your Mallorca garden: a time to plantOctober 12, 2018

Planting season is here and it’s time we spoke to Alexander of upmarket Mallorca garden and terrace design specialists Mashamba about how to plant in a way that makes your Mallorca garden something special.

 Why is now such an important time for a Mallorca garden, Alexander?

Mediterranean plants are built to survive the harsh summer heat and many of them go partially dormant during the hottest months. The warm autumn rains bring them all back to life and they start up on another growth spurt that continues until the winter cold begins. Irrigation systems help to keep a Mallorca garden looking good during the summer, but even still, the garden plants all visibly perk up with some natural showers. It is obvious which they prefer!

What will have happened with your clients immediately prior to planting?

Planting, whilst the most gratifying, is actually usually one of the latter and quicker parts of a Mallorca garden installation. The ground preparation work, any construction and the irrigation set up all needs to happen first. So, by the time we’ve reached the planting stage, our clients will already have been through the noisiest and messiest parts of the job.

What are the factors to take into consideration when planting?

There is a lot more to planting a plant properly than just digging a hole the size of the pot! Proper ground preparation is basically the key to kickstarting a new garden and making sure that it thrives. Wherever you are, this always means aerating the soil in the whole area you mean to landscape as deep as you can go, mixing in good organic manure or compost. In Mallorca, we often take even more drastic measures – breaking up rock and replacing it with improved topsoil. Ground preparation is often one of the more costly and time consuming parts of any new Mallorca garden but trust me, it’s well worth it.

What can go wrong?

There’s often a lot hidden beneath the surface of the soil that doesn’t show itself until you start digging. For instance, water pipes or electrical cables that no-one’s told you about, 2m depth of builders rubble that has been used as filler in lieu of good soil. We deal with unforeseeable factors like these regularly.

What are your current favourite things to plant – is there a trend underway at the moment?

Any plant needs to fit the theme and the location, and all locations demand different things. That said, if you have a large finca, I love to incorporate one of my signature aromatic meadows. This is a very natural style Mallorca garden made up of swathes of aromatics, grasses and perennials, with winding gravel paths running through it.

What are you currently recommending to your clients?

Contrary to my own best interests and what is considered good business skills, I often recommend that my clients reduce the size of the area they’re planning to landscape. While we would all love to have acres of beautifully landscaped grounds, we often forget that someone has to tend to those areas to make sure that they stay looking fantastic. It’s often not just the cost of the Mallorca garden installation that you have to take into consideration, but also the cost of ongoing maintenance. I always say it’s better to do a smaller area well and look after it properly than a larger area that may not receive the same attention.

How can clients help you best?

The job of the garden designer is principally to interpret what would constitute the perfect garden for the client. So, the more input the client can give the better. It’s always very helpful if clients already have a vague idea of what they want, like and they dislike. There are very many different opinions on what makes up the perfect garden.

What rules does Mashamba follow?

Our professional ethos is to do as good a job as possible while being environmentally respectful and treating all clients and suppliers fairly. We like to push the boundaries design-wise and are very results orientated. We want our gardens to thrive and be spectacular, but we appreciate that this is a complete team effort. At the end of the day, we want everybody to be happy.

As you might expect, Mashamba’s services are very much in demand. Alexander already has projects pencilled for 2021. If you’re thinking about a new or improved Mallorca garden for next year, get in touch with Mashamba now.

For a new build, the best time to get in touch with Mashamba is about halfway through construction. This means that building plans are less likely to change much and there’s visual reference for the garden designer to work with. It also allows time for builders to incorporate any requests or suggestions the garden designer may have.

If you’d like to buy property in Mallorca and want to create a wonderful garden or terrace right away, we’re happy to put you in touch with Mashamba so you can obtain a quote for doing so for any one of the properties listed for sale on our website.