Gardeners Laglio

Gardenersin Laglio.

Terraces, citrus, and gardens that predate the road.

Lake Como Province of Como

Day-to-day provision in the village is minimal, and owners here organise around Como and Cernobbio for shopping, medical care, schooling and anything administrative. That is a straightforward arrangement given the distance south, but it should be understood before buying: this is not a village that will supply your week.

On works and maintenance the constraint is delivery. Materials for a waterfront house frequently arrive by barge because the road cannot serve the site, plant has to be craned or carried down flights of steps, and the Strada Regina limits vehicle size for everything else. Shoreline structures such as walls, darsene and landing stages sit under regulation that is strict and slow, and any programme that treats consent as a formality will overrun. Use contractors who have worked this shore; the ones who have will price the access, and the ones who have not will discover it.

For how this trade works across the whole lake, what to ask for, how the firms are chosen and what goes wrong, read gardeners on Lake Como. For the village itself, read our guide to Laglio.

Editorial note: we have not yet written up how this trade works in Laglio specifically, so this page is kept out of search until we have. The introduction itself is unaffected. Ask and we will make it.

On the network

8 teams

Held across the lake rather than in one village. We introduce the two we would use ourselves for the job in front of you.

01What they do

The terraces and their walls

Walking the dry-stone retaining walls after the winter, keeping the drainage above them open, and calling in a mason before a bulge becomes a collapse.

Citrus, camellias and the overwintering

Feeding on acid soils, moving potted citrus into the limonaia before the cold and back out in spring, and the pruning cycles the old plantings expect.

Irrigation

Zoning, filtration where the supply is drawn from the lake, and a full walk of the system in early summer rather than a call in August.

Trees and the shoreline edge

Pollarding on the inherited cycle, taking down what the storms have loosened above the house, and keeping the lake boundary and jetty planting in order.

Questions

How often does a Lake Como garden need attention?

Through the whole year, with the heaviest work in late winter and early spring and a steady weekly presence from April to October.

The winter visits are the ones owners are tempted to cut and the ones that matter most: walls, drainage, pruning and the overwintering of pots. A garden maintained only in season looks acceptable for two or three years and then starts losing structure, at which point recovering it is a building job as much as a gardening one.

How is garden maintenance charged on Lake Como?

Normally as an annual contract covering an agreed number of visits with a defined scope, with major works, tree surgery and replanting quoted separately. We do not publish rates.

What moves the figure is the area, how much of it is terraced, whether there is irrigation to run, how many pots have to be moved twice a year, and whether the team is also responsible for the boundary above the house. Ask what the contract excludes, and in particular whether waste removal is inside it, because on a site with no vehicle access that is not a trivial cost.

What grows well on Lake Como?

The lake keeps winters mild at the shore, which supports camellias and azaleas on the acid soils, oleander, magnolia, wisteria, olives on the drier terraces and citrus kept in pots under cover for the coldest months.

Altitude changes the answer quickly. A hundred metres above the water is a different climate, and gardens on the shaded eastern flanks behave differently again from south-facing terraces. Any planting plan that ignores where on the hillside it sits will disappoint in its second winter.

Written by The Como Private Desk

Published 9 June 2026 Updated 31 August 2026

Elsewhere in Laglio

Property in LaglioHow the Laglio market behaves, and what comes up privately.

Boats at LaglioCharter, transfers and moorings on this part of the lake.

Eating in LaglioHow to eat well here, and how to arrive by water.

Gardeners in other villages

TremezzinaNot a village but a shoreline: four former comuni strung along the western bank, holding the greatest concentration of gardens and grand villas on the lake.

BellagioThe village on the promontory where Lake Como divides. The most visited address on the lake, and still one of the hardest to buy into.

CernobbioThe first town north of Como on the western shore, close enough to the city to live in properly and far enough out to be on the lake.

MenaggioThe town at the western end of the mid-lake crossing, with a working piazza, a golf course above it and a road out to Switzerland behind it.

MoltrasioThe village the lake was partly built from, a quarry town on the western shore between Cernobbio and Laglio, stacked in tiers above a small harbour.

For people who work on the lake

Are you the bestat what you do here?

The list we introduce from is short and grows slowly: by working with somebody, seeing how a job goes, and only then adding them. If that is the standard you hold yourself to, tell us who you are. We read every one. We check work before we introduce anybody, and no money passes in either direction.

Put yourself forward