Table of Contents
The short answer
A garden in Abu Dhabi runs on a calendar that is the reverse of a European one. The cooler months, roughly November to March, are the growing season: the time to plant, prune, repair the lawn and change anything you want changed. The hot months, roughly May to September, are for keeping what you have alive. In summer the work is water, shade for the soil and restraint.
In practice that means this. In summer, water early in the morning, check the irrigation every week, keep a layer of mulch over the beds, mow the lawn a little higher, and do not prune hard, plant or feed heavily. In the cooler months, plant and replant, do the structural pruning, repair the lawn, and turn the irrigation timers down in steps as the weather cools. April and October are for getting ready for what comes next.
At IHR Dream Cleaning the gardening and landscaping service covers lawn mowing and edging, hedge and shrub trimming, weeding and bed tidying, and a check of the irrigation and the health of the plants. It is quoted by the size of the garden and the scope of the work, from photos or a free site assessment, and the plan of visits is agreed with you before work starts.
What the climate does to a garden
Five conditions shape every decision in a garden here. They explain most of the advice that follows.
- Heat and sun. In peak summer a plant loses water through its leaves faster than its roots can replace it, even in wet soil. Many plants stop growing and simply hold on. Soft new growth and thin leaves scorch first.
- Sandy soil. Sand drains in minutes and holds little water or food. Water has to be given more often than in heavier soil, and anything that adds organic matter, such as compost dug in or mulch breaking down, helps the soil keep both.
- Salt. The soil, the air near the coast and often the irrigation water all carry salt. As water evaporates from the surface the salt stays behind and builds up round the roots. It shows as brown, crisp leaf tips and edges, and sometimes as a white crust on the soil.
- Wind and sand. Hot wind dries plants faster than still heat does. Blown sand scours young leaves, buries drip lines and piles up against hedges and walls.
- Humidity. Late summer is humid as well as hot. Leaves that stay wet through a warm night are where fungal problems start.
What copes and what struggles
Plants that belong to this climate, or have been grown here for generations, take all of that in their stride once they are established. Date palms tolerate heat and salt better than almost anything else in the garden. Bougainvillea flowers hardest when it is kept on the dry side. Frangipani stores water in its thick branches. The native ghaf tree roots deep and asks for very little.
What struggles is whatever is shallow-rooted, soft or recently planted: lawns, seasonal flowers, anything in a small pot, and any tree or shrub in its first summer. That is where the summer effort goes.
The gardening year at a glance
The dates move a little from year to year, so go by the weather and not the calendar. The growing season begins when the nights cool and the doors of the house start to be left open. It ends when midday becomes uncomfortable again.
| Job | Hot months | Cooler months |
|---|---|---|
| Watering | Early morning, deep, checked weekly | Less often; timers turned down |
| Irrigation | Watch every zone run each week | Repair and re-plan |
| Lawn | Mow higher; never when dry and dull | Repair patches; mow less often |
| Pruning | Dead and broken wood, light trims | Structural pruning and reshaping |
| Planting | Avoid | Trees, shrubs, hedges, flowers, lawn |
| Feeding | Hold back; follow the label | Light feeding, by the label |
| Mulch | Keep the layer topped up | Renew before the heat returns |
| Pests | Mites; fungus in the humid weeks | Sap-suckers on new growth; weeds |
Summer: watering and irrigation
Water in the early morning. The soil is at its coolest, little is lost to evaporation, and the plant goes into the heat of the day with its roots supplied. Evening is the second choice. The water stays in the soil overnight, although foliage wetted by sprinklers stays wet as well, which invites fungus in the humid weeks. Midday watering loses the most to evaporation.
Water deeply, not just often. A long watering that soaks the root zone draws roots downwards, where the soil is cooler and stays damp for longer. A brief daily sprinkle wets the top few centimetres, keeps the roots at the surface where the heat is worst, and leaves salt behind as it dries. In sand, deep watering still has to be frequent, because the soil does not hold it for long. The test is simple. Push a trowel or a finger into the bed a few hours after watering. It should be damp below the surface, not only on top.
Drip lines suit beds, hedges and trees. They put water at the roots, lose little to evaporation and do not spray the walls and windows. Sprinklers suit lawns. Where a sprinkler is watering a bed or a hedge, a good share of the water lands on leaves, paving and the house.
Salt is managed with water too. An occasional long, slow soak pushes the salt that has collected near the surface down below the roots. It is worth doing for beds that show a white crust or plants with burnt leaf tips, provided the bed drains.
The weekly irrigation check
More plants are lost in summer to an irrigation fault than to the heat itself. A blocked dripper, or a timer that reset after a power cut, can go unnoticed for a fortnight, and in August a fortnight is enough. Once a week, turn each zone on by hand and walk it while it runs.
- Check the controller first: the right time and date, the right programme for the season, and a working backup battery if it has one.
- Run one zone at a time and look at every head and every line.
- On sprinklers, look for heads that do not pop up, heads that have turned to spray a wall, a window or the driveway, and a gusher where a head has broken off.
- On drip lines, look for drippers that give nothing, lines lifted out of place or buried by sand, and joints that have pulled apart.
- Look for wet ground where nothing is being watered. It points to a leak under the surface.
- Look for the dry patches. A brown arc in a lawn, or one wilting shrub in a healthy row, is nearly always a coverage problem and not a plant problem.
- Rinse the system's filter if it has one, and write down anything that needs a repair.
Too much water looks like too little
Overwatering kills as surely as drought, and the signs are confusingly similar. Leaves yellow and drop, growth goes soft, and the plant wilts, because roots sitting in waterlogged soil rot and stop working. Mushrooms on the lawn, a green film on the soil and a sour smell are the clues. Check the soil before giving a wilting plant more water. If it is wet below the surface, the plant needs less water or better drainage, not more.
Pots and planters
Containers are the hardest things to keep alive in summer. A pot heats from all sides and can dry out in a day. Move pots out of the afternoon sun where you can, group them so that they shade each other, use the largest pot the plant will take, and check them daily. Empty the saucers. Water standing under a pot does the roots no good, and it breeds mosquitoes.
Summer: mulch, lawn, pruning and feeding
Mulch: shade for the soil
A layer of mulch over the beds is the cheapest help a summer garden can have. It shades the soil, slows evaporation, keeps the roots cooler and holds weeds down. Organic mulch, such as bark or composted material, also improves the sand as it breaks down.
There are two cautions. Keep mulch a hand's width clear of trunks and stems, because mulch heaped against bark holds damp and causes rot. And do not pile it against the house wall, where damp, covered soil is exactly what termites look for. The signs of those are described in termites in Abu Dhabi villas.
The lawn in heat
The grasses used for lawns here are warm-season types. Given enough water they keep growing through the heat, and they slow down in the coolest weeks. In summer, set the mower higher, because longer blades shade the soil and the roots beneath them. Never take off more than about a third of the height in one cut. Keep the mower blades sharp, and mow in the early morning or the evening. A lawn that has dried out and gone dull is left alone until it has been watered and has recovered.
Pruning: when not to cut hard
Do not prune hard in the hot months. A plant's own foliage shades its stems and bark. Strip it away in July and the exposed wood scorches, and the plant answers with a flush of soft new growth that burns and demands more water. Summer pruning is limited to dead, broken and diseased wood, spent flowers and the light trimming that keeps a hedge in line.
On palms, only fronds that are completely brown come off. Cutting green fronds weakens the palm. Work at the top of a tall palm needs people with the right equipment and is never a job for a household ladder. If you want palm work included in a visit, describe the palms and their height when you book, so that the scope can be confirmed first.
Feeding and planting
Hold back on fertiliser in peak heat. Feeding pushes soft growth at the moment the plant can least support it, and fertilisers are salts, which add to the load on roots that are already stressed. If a feed is given, follow the product label exactly and water it in. Planting should wait as well. A new plant has no roots beyond its pot, and it would meet its hardest months first. If something must go in, give it temporary shade and check it every day.
The cooler months: planting, pruning and repair
When the nights cool, the garden wakes up, and for about five months almost everything is possible. This is when the year's real gardening is done.
Planting
Plant early in the season. A tree, shrub or hedge planted at the start of the cool months has the whole season to put down roots before its first summer. One planted at the end has a few weeks. Improve the sand before planting by mixing compost or other organic matter into the planting area, so that water and food stay within reach of the roots.
This is also the season for seasonal flowers, for herbs and vegetables in beds or pots, and for laying or repairing a lawn. When choosing plants, favour those already growing well in gardens near you, and ask how much water and how much salt each can take. Date palms, bougainvillea, frangipani and ghaf are examples that are at home here.
Structural pruning
The heavier pruning belongs here: reducing a hedge that has outgrown its line, thinning a crowded shrub, lifting the canopy of a tree, taking out crossing branches. Cuts heal in mild weather, and the growth that follows is not scorched. Bougainvillea flowers on new growth, so it is cut back after a flush of flowers has finished, not while it is building one. Frangipani often drops its leaves in the cooler months and stands bare. It is resting, not dying, and it needs very little water until the new leaves appear.
Turn the timers down
The commonest winter mistake is an irrigation controller still running its August programme in January. The plants need far less. The surplus washes food out of the sand, encourages fungus and weeds, leaves standing water for mosquitoes, and stains walls and paving. Reduce the watering in steps as the weather cools, watch how the plants respond, and switch the system off for a few days after rain. Raise it again in steps from March, before the plants show stress and not after.
Lawn repair and weeds
Fill and level the low spots in the lawn, and re-lay or re-seed bare patches now, while new grass can establish. Weeds germinate with the cooler nights and with any rain, so pull them while they are small and before they set seed. A bed that is weeded every fortnight in winter stays manageable. One left until spring has seeded itself for next year.
Before the heat returns
By April, do the pre-summer check: every irrigation zone tested and repaired, the controller on its summer programme, the mulch renewed, the last planting finished and temporary shade ready for anything young. Our service pages make the same point: irrigation should be checked before summer, when plants suffer fastest. Where this sits among a home's other pre-summer jobs, such as the AC service, is set out in a home maintenance calendar for Abu Dhabi.
After wind and sand
A dust storm leaves a garden looking worse than it is. A coat of dust cuts the light a leaf receives, so rinse the foliage with a gentle spray in the early morning. Then check the things that do real harm. Drifted sand buries drip lines and clogs sprinkler heads, so run each zone. Clear the sand banked against the stems of hedges and the foot of walls. Cut broken branches back cleanly to a joint, so that they do not tear further.
Young trees need a stake and a soft tie for their first seasons, loose enough to let the trunk move a little, and the ties should be checked after every blow. The order for the house, the glass and the yard after a storm is in cleaning a villa after a sandstorm.
Pests, disease and standing water
Most plant pests in a villa garden are sap-suckers: aphids, mealybugs, whitefly and scale insects. They gather on soft new growth and the undersides of leaves, and they leave a sticky film that turns black with mould. Ants running up and down a stem are often tending them. In hot, dry, dusty weather mites take over, and leaves turn pale and speckled. In the humid weeks, fungal spots and mildew appear where leaves stay wet.
Start with the mildest answer. Wash the pests off with a firm jet of water, cut out the worst-affected shoots and bin them, and fix whatever weakened the plant, which is usually the watering. Spraying a whole garden with insecticide kills the insects that eat the pests along with the pests, and it puts chemicals where children and pets play. If a product is used, it should be one made for that plant and that pest, applied exactly as its label says. Never use a garden product indoors.
Date palms have a serious pest of their own, the red palm weevil, whose grubs tunnel inside the trunk. Oozing from the trunk, holes, chewed fibre, a sour smell or a drooping crown are reasons to call a palm specialist quickly, because an infested palm can die and can become unsafe.
The garden is also the route by which household pests reach the house. Ants nest under paving and in planters. Cockroaches live in drains and damp ground cover. Rodents shelter in dense planting and under stored materials. Keep planting trimmed back from the walls, store nothing against them and repair irrigation leaks. Our pest control service deals with household pests such as cockroaches, ants, rodents and flying insects, and in a villa the accessible outdoor areas are treated along with the inside. Which pests you can manage yourself is covered in household pests in Abu Dhabi.
Standing water
Mosquitoes breed in still water, and in warm weather they go from egg to adult in a week or so. A garden offers them more places than people expect. Walk round once a week and tip out or drain each one.
- Saucers under pots, buckets, watering cans and toys.
- Low spots in the lawn that stay wet after watering.
- Blocked drain covers and gullies.
- The puddle under a dripping tap or an AC condensate pipe.
- An unused fountain or water feature.
- Rainwater lying on a pool cover or a tarpaulin.
The garden, the house and the pool
A garden's faults show up elsewhere on the plot. A sprinkler that throws tap water at a wall or a window every morning leaves white mineral spots that are far harder to remove than dust, so turn the head before paying to have the marks cleaned. Hedge cutting and mowing cover the paving in clippings, which is why the garden is done first when the whole exterior is being cleaned. That order is explained in getting a villa ready for outdoor season.
Next to a pool, the garden matters more. Leaves, clippings, soil and fertiliser that reach the water feed algae and load the filter. Keep the planting nearest the pool trimmed back, keep sprinklers from spraying into it, and do not feed the lawn right up to the pool's edge. What the pool itself needs each week is in villa pool care in an Abu Dhabi summer.
What a gardening visit covers, and how it is booked
Our gardening visit covers four things: lawn mowing and edging; hedge and shrub trimming; weeding and tidying of the beds; and a check of the irrigation system and the general condition of the plants, with obvious problems pointed out to you. At the end the gardener walks the garden with you and checks that the irrigation runs on each zone. Green waste and trimmings are cleared before the team leaves.
Our service page gives one to two hours as typical for a routine visit to a small or medium villa garden, and half a day or more for the full tidy-up of an overgrown one. Most customers book regular visits during the growing months, weekly or every two weeks. A one-off tidy-up is available for a garden that needs a reset first, or one that has to look right for an occasion. We have not published a fixed programme or a price. Gardening is quoted by the size of the garden and the scope of the work, and the plan of visits is agreed after photos or, for a larger job, a free site assessment.
The irrigation check finds faults and reports them. If you want a repair, new planting or a change to the layout, say so when you book, so that the scope can be confirmed and quoted with the rest.
What to send, and what to have ready
Describe the garden when you book on the website or in the IHR Dream app, and send photos by email to info@ihrdreamcleaning.com with your name and booking details. Once the price is confirmed you pay by card from My bookings on this website.
- Photos of the whole garden, and of anything that worries you.
- What you want: regular upkeep, trimming, planting or a redesign.
- When the garden was last maintained.
- Where the irrigation controller and the outdoor taps are, and any fault you know of.
- Which plants need special care or must not be cut back.
- On the day: furniture and toys off the lawn, the side gate open if there is one, and space to park near the entrance for the tools and the green waste.
Common mistakes, and what they cost
Most garden losses here come from a short list of habits. Each one is cheap to avoid and dear to repair.
- The summer programme left on the controller all winter: wasted water, fungus, mosquitoes and stained walls.
- A light sprinkle every day: shallow roots, salt at the surface, and a lawn that collapses the first time a watering is missed.
- Hard pruning in July: scorched wood, and a plant that spends the rest of the summer recovering.
- Planting in May: the full price paid for a plant with little chance.
- Fertiliser in peak heat: burnt roots and soft growth that scorches.
- Mulch heaped against trunks and walls: rot, and shelter for pests.
- One wet patch or one dry patch ignored: the first is a leak, the second is a dead shrub in three weeks.
- More water for a wilting plant, without checking the soil first.
Common questions
When is the right time to plant in Abu Dhabi?
At the start of the cooler months, once the nights have cooled, which is usually from late October or November. Early planting gives the longest run before the first summer. Planting can continue through the winter. By April it is late, and from May it is better to wait.
How often should the garden be watered in summer?
There is no single figure, because it depends on the soil, the plant and the kind of irrigation. Lawns and pots need the most frequent water, often every day in peak heat. Established trees and shrubs on drip lines do better with longer, less frequent watering. Judge by the soil a few centimetres down, not by the surface, and by how the plants look in the late afternoon. If your community or your water provider sets rules about watering, those come first, so ask them.
Why is the lawn patchy?
In most cases the water is not reaching that patch evenly: a blocked or sunken head, a head knocked out of line, or a zone with too little pressure. Run the zone and watch. If the coverage is good, look next at ground compacted by feet, at shade and at pet urine. On our visits a patchy lawn is checked against the irrigation coverage, and you are told if the watering pattern needs adjusting.
A plant is dying. Should it just be replaced?
Find out why first. Our service page makes the point that a dead or dying plant is often a sign of an irrigation or placement problem. A new plant put into the same dry corner, the same waterlogged hole or the same heat reflected off a wall will go the same way. Check the water at that spot, the drainage and the exposure, then decide whether to replace it with the same plant or a tougher one.
Can the garden survive while we travel in summer?
Only if someone looks at it. An automatic system keeps a garden alive for weeks, until one head breaks or the timer resets, and then nothing tells you. Before you leave, do the full irrigation check, move the pots into shade and group them, and arrange for someone to walk the garden once a week while a zone runs. If you have regular gardening visits, keep them going while you are away and make sure the gardener can get in.
How can the garden use less water?
Mulch the beds. Water in the early morning. Move beds and hedges from sprinklers to drip lines. Repair leaks in the week they appear. Change the controller with the seasons. Group plants with the same thirst on the same zone, so that the tough ones are not watered at the rate the delicate ones need. Over time, choose plants suited to heat and salt, and consider how much lawn you really use, since grass is the thirstiest thing in most gardens.
We live in an apartment. Do you look after terraces and planters?
In tower and apartment communities the gardens belong to the building and are looked after by its management. We work on private terraces and balcony planters where residents have them. Pots on a balcony follow the same rules as pots in a garden, with one addition: check where the water drains to before you water, so that it does not run onto the balcony below.
Work with the season
The gardens that look good in Abu Dhabi are not the ones that fight the summer. They are watered properly, shaded at the soil and left alone through the heat, then planted, shaped and repaired in the months when plants can respond. If the irrigation is checked every week and the controller is changed with the seasons, most of the rest follows.
If you would like the mowing, trimming, weeding and irrigation checks taken off your hands, the gardening and landscaping page sets out what a visit includes. We work every day from 8 AM – 8 PM. Book a visit, describe the garden and send a few photos, and the scope and the price are agreed before any work starts.
