Lawn alternatives for a Mallorca garden

Lawn is the first thing a Mallorca municipality restricts when water gets short, because a lawn cannot be watered by drip. The usual replacements are a gravel garden with planting, low ground cover, a sown meadow, or artificial grass. A new lawn costs €2,600 to €3,800 on a medium garden, and most alternatives cost less to run.

Why replace a lawn at all?

Because on this island a lawn is a machine for consuming water, and the rules increasingly say you cannot. Municipal restrictions commonly limit garden watering to drip systems, which a lawn cannot use, and to native or low-water planting, which grass is not. Add the cost of keeping it green through August and the argument mostly makes itself.

What are the options?

Gravel gardens

A gravel garden is planting with a mineral mulch instead of bare soil between the plants. Done properly the ground is prepared, plants are spaced for their mature size, and the gravel goes down thick enough to suppress weeds. It looks like the island, it survives a drought decree without argument, and the maintenance is an hour of weeding rather than a weekly mow.

What it is not is a covering for a failed lawn. Gravel over compacted ground with a membrane underneath traps water, cooks roots and fills with wind-blown soil until weeds grow on top of it anyway.

Ground cover and meadow

Creeping thyme, dichondra and similar low plants give a green surface that tolerates the odd footstep, though not a football match. A sown meadow is the seasonal version: green and flowering through the wet months, dormant and straw-coloured through the summer, which is what this island naturally looks like in July. Owners who expect an English lawn are disappointed. Owners who expect Mallorca are not.

What if children need somewhere to play?

Then keep grass, but shrink it. A small irrigated lawn close to the house, with everything beyond it planted, uses a fraction of the water of a lawn covering the whole plot and still does the job. The alternative is artificial grass, which at €20 to €60 per square metre installed needs no water at all and stays green through August. It also gets uncomfortably hot in full sun, so it belongs in partial shade if anyone is going to lie on it. We compare the two in artificial versus natural grass on Mallorca.

Can you convert in stages?

Yes, and it is usually the sensible way. Take out the part of the lawn nobody walks on, plant and mulch it, and see how the garden behaves for a season before deciding about the rest. Splitting the work over two years also spreads the cost, and the planting establishes better if it is not all going in at once.

How the matching works

We do not lay lawns or gravel. We keep a list of vetted lawn and meadow companies on Mallorca and pass your job to the ones that cover your area. Say how much lawn you have and what you use it for, and the quotes come back useful.

Shrink it before you lose it

Deciding what the grass is actually for is the whole exercise. Send the job through and vetted Mallorca companies will quote the conversion, in stages if that suits you.