Eygalières holds a rare concentration of characterful properties: restored mas, eighteenth-century bastides, former wine estates given a new life. Our clients here share one requirement — a garden that steps back in favour of the architecture, and that holds up without life support when July passes 38 °C.
The landscape signature of Eygalières is the dry garden. Not a wasteland: a rigorous composition where every plant has been chosen to take three months without rain, where mineral mulch (pale limestone gravel, Durance pebbles) replaces pine bark, and where irrigation is limited to drip lines through the first two years of establishment, then disappears. Our palettes mix Phlomis fruticosa, common rosemary, santolina, shrubby sages, helichrysum, Salvia clevelandii and stipa grasses.
The ancient olive is the other strong marker. We regularly transplant trees of 100 to 300 years old, preparing the rootball over six months, cutting the crown back under control, and following establishment across three seasons. Pruning these historic trees calls for a careful reading of each one: you do not treat a centuries-old olive the way you treat nursery stock.
Old mas often raise a question of transition: how to link a stone courtyard, an ornamental olive grove and a looser parkland without a visible break. We work in sequences — a cypress avenue, a dry fescue lawn, a bed of ornamental garrigue, a fringe of holm oaks — avoiding the abrupt contrasts that make a garden look assembled.
For Eygalières, Mas-Blanc-des-Alpilles or Orgon, see our dry garden design, our pruning of ancient olives and our low-pressure drip irrigation, or request a quote.
A free, no-obligation quote, prepared with care by our team.