Landscaping & Gardening in Dubai

Dubai landscaping is priced per square metre, and the confusion always comes from the same place: the job has two halves that cost wildly different amounts. Published rates from Dubai landscaping companies put softscape — soil preparation, planting, trees, grass, irrigation — at roughly AED 50 to 100 per m². Hardscape, meaning tiling, pathways, decking, walls and anything you lay or pour, runs about AED 150 to 300 per m². Premium villa finishes are quoted AED 250 to 500 per m². Soil prep and levelling alone is commonly AED 30 to 70 per m², and in Dubai it is not optional.

Scaled to whole projects, the market ranges look like this: a small garden around AED 5,000 to 10,000, a medium garden AED 15,000 to 40,000, a full villa garden AED 50,000 to 100,000 and up. Townhouse backyards in the newer communities are typically quoted AED 15,000 to 40,000, and a standard four or five bedroom villa AED 40,000 to 150,000. Pergolas commonly land between AED 8,000 and 25,000, water features AED 5,000 to 20,000. Those are figures Dubai contractors publish for their own work, not our prices — treat them as the shape of the market, not your quote. The number that actually decides your bill is how much hard surface you've asked for and how much of the old garden has to come out first.

Dubai gives you two seasons that matter to a garden. Roughly October to April is the planting window — new plants root, grass establishes, trees settle. June to September is the survival window, when daytime highs pass 45°C and the ground is hotter still, and new planting mostly dies. A contractor who happily quotes you a full soft landscaping install in August is either building the replacement cost into the price or is planning not to be reachable in November. If you're doing a full build, design in summer and plant in autumn.

Irrigation is the part that decides whether the garden still exists in a year. Drip lines on a timer, checked every season, because a split line or a stuck valve shows up on your DEWA bill weeks before it shows on the plants. Species choice carries the same weight: the Damas tree (Conocarpus) is the one Dubai homeowners regret, and Dubai Municipality campaigned against it after residents reported roots destroying drains, pipework, walls and pool shells — several communities now ban it outright. Then there's the dust, which never stops. That combination — water cost, summer die-back and shamal sand — is exactly why artificial grass, quoted around AED 60 to 120 per m² installed, is everywhere in Jumeirah, Mirdif and the Ranches. No irrigation bill, no August die-back, just a rinse and a brush.

In developer-managed communities like Arabian Ranches and Dubai Hills Estate, anything that changes the external appearance of your property needs a No Objection Certificate before work starts. That covers pergolas, gazebos, shade structures, swimming pools, boundary changes and most hard landscaping. Planting beds, shrubs and grass usually don't. Submissions now run through the developer's community portal with UAE PASS, and the design review checks your layout against the neighbourhood theme — which is why 'my neighbour already has one' has never once worked as an approval.

Older freehold and Dubai Municipality areas — Mirdif, and parts of Jumeirah and Al Barsha — have their own permission route, and if you're renting the villa you also need the landlord's written sign-off. Settle one question before you sign anything: is the contractor preparing the drawings and submitting the NOC, or are you? Get the answer in writing, with a name attached. That single line is the difference between a four-week job and a four-month one, and unapproved hard landscaping is the most common reason Dubai garden projects stall halfway through — or get torn out at your cost.

A Dubai garden left alone goes backwards in about six weeks. That's why almost nobody here books a gardener when things start looking bad — they run a recurring visit, fortnightly through the cooler months and usually weekly across summer, when an irrigation fault does the most damage the fastest.

Published Dubai rate cards give you the market: routine garden care, mowing and watering visits sit around AED 79 to 109 per hour, shrub trimming near AED 99 per hour, pest or weed treatment about AED 199 a visit, tree trimming from around AED 610 and full tree removal from about AED 775. Basic annual garden maintenance is quoted in the AED 2,500 to 6,000 range. Recurring bookings are normally billed monthly and come discounted — and you should insist on the same gardener each visit, because the person who knows where your drip lines run is the one who spots the leak everyone else walks past. Two things to check before you commit: that the visit includes an irrigation inspection rather than just cutting and blowing, and that green waste removal is in the price and not added later.