The church was built in the twelfth century, when Gärdslöv lay beside Näsbyholmssjön, a lake drained in 1869 whose former bed now forms the cultivated landscape around the building. In the 1400s the original flat wooden ceiling was replaced with vaulting, giving the interior its present character.
The building was altered further in the nineteenth century: a sacristy was added in 1836, and in the 1850s the tower and a north transept were built on. Before the tower existed, the church had two side entrances following medieval custom, one for men and one for women; a doorway on the south side, said to have been the men's entrance, can still be seen. Visitors now enter through the base of the tower, part of the new nineteenth-century building work at the front.
Among the furnishings, the square sandstone font is the oldest surviving object, carved in the twelfth century with depictions of trees, flowers, the sun and the moon. The carved pulpit, altar and a triumphal crucifix all date from the 1600s, giving a sense of the church's later medieval and early modern character.
The present altarpiece was bought in Rome in 1903 by Fredrik von Blixen-Finecke; an earlier altarpiece from the late seventeenth century has been preserved and now hangs on the wall nearby, allowing the two to be compared.
The current organ, a mechanical instrument, was built in 1962 by A. Mårtenssons Orgelfabrik of Lund, replacing an earlier harmonium used in the church.