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Garden Insurance Advice.

There are wide discrepancies in the attitude of home insurers to items outside the house so it is vital that you confirm the details of your own insurance. It is too easy to assume that items around your home are covered but there are frequently significant restrictions hidden in the depths of your policy. Gardien recommends you undertake the following:

  • Keep a full catalogue of all high value items, especially garden antiques.
  • Check whether your home insurance policy includes specific clauses re items outside the confines of the house itself.
  • Look at the value limits imposed - often very low, even as low as £250.00. Use the Garden Inventory to evaluate your garden.
  • Check if you have to specify individual items over a particular value.
  • Sometimes limits apply to the whole period of the insurance rather than to a single event, so check carefully what your current policy covers.
  • Check the maximum period you are allowed to be away from home during the term of the policy (normally this is a maximum continuous period.)
  • Check whether garden cover (or increased garden cover) is available for an extra premium and if so what excess would apply.
  • Is the policy excess the same as for Home Contents?
  • Check whether your insurer will only cover you if you use specified security installers.
  • Make sure you conform to any minimum requirements which may be stated in your policy.
  • Are you covered for re-landscaping if you suffer damage from natural events or malicious damage?
  • Consult your insurance company/broker before installing any new system as they may well have minimum standards to adhere to.

Garden Insurance Products

At Gardien, we recently conducted our own survey of 55 major Insurance Companies, based upon the information made available by them on the Internet and supplemented, where possible, by our own enquiries.

Specifically, we looked at the amount of cover available for incidents of Garden Theft under the major headings of Items Stolen From Locked Outbuildings, Items Left In The Open and Plants / Trees etc.

In the majority of cases (i.e. 30 of the above Companies), cover for such incidents was either excluded or – at best, minimal. Accordingly, we would stress the advice given above; first, check the value of your garden possessions (using our Garden Inventory),then, check the detail of your Insurance Policy and - if in doubt, consult your Broker/Insurance Company.

By contrast, there are some notable exceptions, particularly Companies that specialise in the High Net Worth clientele, where it is possible to obtain cover between £5,000 - £10,000 in some / all of the above categories. As for the cost involved for such cover, our advice is similar to that above – first, check the value of your garden possessions (using our Garden Inventory) - then, shop around!

Finally, there are companies/organisations offering very attractive cover under the heading of “Garden Insurance” policies. However, to the best of our knowledge, these are invariably combined House/Garden Insurance policies.

In view of the ever increasing levels of garden crime, together with the immediate additional threat of “metal theft” we would urge all gardeners, as a matter of urgency, to confirm the true value of their gardens/contents and to satisfy themselves that they have adequate insurance cover NOW!!