Ancient Olive Trees as Living Sculpture
Sourcing, transplanting and caring for centenary olive trees on a Marbella villa.
A 200-year-old olive tree is not a plant — it's a piece of architecture with roots. It sets the scale of a garden, throws a shadow that changes hour by hour, and outlives every other element on the terrace.
We source from licensed Andalusian groves where trees have been displaced by infrastructure, never wild-lifted. Each is photographed, root-balled, and transported overnight to avoid heat stress.
The first three summers are critical. We design micro-irrigation that mimics the deep, infrequent rainfall the tree evolved with — encouraging the roots to anchor down rather than spread shallow.
Placing a tree that cannot be moved twice
A centenary olive arrives once. We mock up the position with a crane silhouette or a scaffold pole and live with it for a day, checking the shadow it throws on the terrace at dinner, the view it interrupts from the principal bedroom, and the way it frames the sea from the pool.
Aftercare, year by year
Year one is about root establishment: deep watering every ten days, no feeding, no pruning beyond deadwood. Year two, structural pruning begins to open the canopy. By year three the tree should be watered monthly at most, and the garden around it can finally be planted.
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