What to do with a sloping garden in Mallorca

A sloping plot has three sensible answers on this island: terrace it into levels, plant the bank and leave it as a slope, or do a bit of both. Terracing a medium garden runs €11,500 to €16,500 and gives you usable ground. Planting a bank costs a fraction of that and gives you a view to look at rather than space to sit in.

Do you actually need terraces?

Ask what the slope is stopping you doing. If the answer is sitting outside, eating outside or letting children play, you need a level, and only terracing gives you one. If the answer is that it looks unfinished, planting will solve it for a tenth of the money.

Plenty of Mallorcan gardens work with one level near the house and everything beyond it left as planted slope. That is the traditional arrangement here, and it costs less than terracing the whole plot to a standard nobody uses.

What does the work cost?

Those figures assume machinery can reach the work. On a plot where everything arrives by wheelbarrow, labour rises steeply and the same terrace can cost half as much again.

What makes one slope more expensive than another?

• Access for a machine, which is the single biggest factor.
• Height of the retaining needed, since a two-metre wall is a different structure from a knee-high one.
• Whether stone can be won on site or has to be brought in.
• What sits above the slope, because a terrace under a neighbour’s ground is an engineering question rather than a gardening one.

Where does drainage come in?

Rain here arrives all at once. A slope that looks dry for eight months becomes a watercourse for one afternoon in October, and any structure built across it has to let that water through or route it around. Dry stone does this naturally, which is part of why the island builds that way. Mortared walls need drainage designed in, and the ones that fail are almost always the ones where it was not.

What can you plant on a bank?

Deep-rooting Mediterranean species that hold soil and cope with the run-off: rosemary, lavender, santolina, mastic and myrtle, with wild olive or carob higher up for structure. Avoid anything that needs regular watering on a slope, because water applied at the top mostly arrives at the bottom. The drought-tolerant planting guide covers the list in more detail.

Does terracing need permission?

It can, particularly where retaining walls reach a certain height, where the work changes ground levels, or on rural land with its own restrictions. Rules are set by each ajuntament, so this is a question to settle before anyone quotes rather than after they have started.

How the matching works

We do not build terraces. We keep a list of vetted terracing and dry stone companies on Mallorca and pass your job to the ones covering your municipality, who quote you directly. Photographs from the top and the bottom of the slope get you the most useful answers.

Start with what you want to do outside

Decide whether you need flat ground or just a slope that looks intentional. That one answer changes the budget by an order of magnitude. Send the photographs through and vetted Mallorca companies will price both options.