Regular garden care, a one off clearance of something that has got away over a winter, or an irrigation system that has stopped reaching half the garden. Tell us the size of the plot and what is there, and you get a free quote for a visit or for a schedule, whichever suits the property.
Garden maintenance in the Algarve covers mowing and strimming, hedge and tree pruning, bed and gravel weeding, clearance of overgrown plots, green waste removal, and irrigation repair and programming. The work here is seasonal in a specific way: heavy growth in spring, heat management in summer, and a clearance before the rain arrives in autumn. Handyman Algarve quotes garden maintenance in the Algarve for free, in English or Portuguese, per visit or as a schedule.
What the work covers
Regular maintenance on a schedule: cutting, edging, pruning, weeding, feeding, and taking the cuttings away.
Hedges and shrubs, from a metre of rosemary to a boundary of cypress that needs a platform.
Overgrown clearance, including plots that have been left a season or two, which is the most requested one off job here.
Trees: shaping, crown lifting, and removing dead wood. Anything large or near a building is a job for someone with the right kit and insurance.
Irrigation: repairing, extending and reprogramming systems, which is a section of this service rather than a separate trade.
Pre arrival and post departure visits for houses that are used part of the year, timed to changeovers rather than to a calendar.
Irrigation repair and programming
Irrigation is part of this service because a garden here lives or dies by it. The common jobs are replacing a stuck solenoid valve, tracing a leak that has dropped pressure across a zone, cleaning or replacing filters that have silted up from a borehole or tank supply, repairing pipe crushed by roots or by a car, replacing brittle poly pipe that has been sitting in the sun, and reprogramming a controller after a power cut. Programming is worth as much as the repair: two zones on the same schedule when one is shade and the other full sun is how half a garden drowns while the other half dries. If a system is being extended, the honest thing to check first is whether the existing supply and pressure can carry the extra zone, because adding to an already marginal system makes everything worse rather than the new part better.
Green waste, and the part nobody thinks about
A hedge trim generates more volume than most people expect, and where it goes is part of the job rather than an afterthought. Cuttings taken away, chipped on site, or stacked for the owner to deal with are three different prices, and it is worth saying at the quote stage which you want. Piles of dry cuttings left near a house are also a fire risk in summer, and the rules on clearing land around buildings are the município's to enforce, so if a clearance is being done for that reason, say so and it will be done to the right standard.
What determines the price?
As of 2026, a maintenance visit is priced by the time it takes and by what has to leave the property, and those are driven by the size of the plot, how much of it is planted rather than paved, the height of the hedges, and the frequency. A garden visited fortnightly costs less per visit than the same garden visited twice a year, because the second one is a clearance every time. A one off clearance is quoted after seeing photos, since the difference between waist high and shoulder high is the difference between a strimmer and a brush cutter with a second person. Irrigation is quoted as diagnosis plus parts, like any other repair. Green waste removal is priced by volume.
Photos of the whole plot from two corners, plus the rough dimensions, are enough to quote a schedule. See how it works for the process from request to finished job.
We reply within one business day, usually much faster.
Frequently asked questions
What does garden maintenance mean?
It is the recurring work that keeps a garden in the state it was designed to be in, as opposed to landscaping, which changes that state. In practice it means mowing or strimming, hedge and shrub pruning, weeding beds and gravel, feeding and treating where needed, clearing leaves and cuttings, and keeping the irrigation working. On most Algarve properties it also means managing what the summer does to everything, which is why the visit frequency changes twice a year.
How do I maintain a garden in this climate?
Work to the calendar rather than to the appearance. Prune before growth rather than after it, feed in spring and autumn rather than in high summer, water deeply and infrequently so roots go down instead of sideways, and mulch beds so the soil does not bake. The single biggest change most gardens here need is watering less often for longer, because daily light watering keeps roots at the surface where the ground is hottest and driest.
What grows well in the Algarve?
Anything adapted to a long dry summer: olive, carob, fig, almond and citrus among the trees, oleander, lavender, rosemary, plumbago, bougainvillea and agapanthus among the shrubs and perennials, and succulents where nothing else will hold. Lawns are the hard case, because a fine grass lawn is the thirstiest thing anyone plants here, and drought tolerant grasses or gravel and planting are what keep a garden green looking in August without a running tap.
How often should a garden be visited?
Most gardens here need more visits between March and June than at any other time, because that is when everything grows at once, and fewer in the deep summer when growth slows under heat. A common pattern is fortnightly in spring, monthly through high summer, then a heavier autumn tidy before the rain. A holiday home that is let needs its schedule set by changeover dates instead, since the garden has to look right on arrival days rather than on average.
Why would an irrigation system stop working?
In order of likelihood: a controller that lost its programme after a power cut, a solenoid valve that has stuck closed, a filter clogged with grit from a borehole or a tank, a cut or crushed pipe, and a leaking joint that has dropped the pressure so the far zones no longer reach. Drip lines also block with mineral deposits. The useful diagnostic is whether one zone fails or all of them, because one zone points at a valve and all of them at the supply, the pump or the controller.
What are the common problems with irrigation systems here?
Grit and mineral scale, sun damage, and roots. Water from a borehole or a storage tank carries fine sediment that blocks drippers and filters. Ultraviolet makes exposed poly pipe brittle, so an unburied line that has been fine for five years splits in one summer. Roots find and crush pipe, and shrubs grow over sprinklers until half of a zone is watering a leaf. None of them are dramatic and all of them show up as one dry patch that nobody connects to the system for weeks.
