Putting a price-tag on paradise: Insuring your client’s garden

Does your client’s garden appear on the cover of House & Leisure magazine? A beautifully landscaped garden can cost thousands of rand and should not be overlooked when writing short-term covers

Insurance against damage to gardens is seldom top of mind for consumers or their brokers. Your client may have invested substantial amounts of money to have their garden professionally landscaped. In such cases you should recommend appropriate insurance cover to reinstate the garden to its prior condition should a severe risk event occur.

Timber! Cover for falling trees

Garden insurance is a specialist form of cover and the few standard personal lines policies that include garden insurance are of limited scope. As a rule, reinstatement of garden insurance is usually found as an automatic extension under policies specifically designed for high net worth individuals. There are two main categories for an extension to insurance policies, including the removal of fallen trees and the reinstatement of gardens after damage to a home.

One of the more common causes of damage, and subsequent claims on the garden portion of a policy, is the removal of fallen trees following severe storms. This is a common issue and most personal lines policies will cover such repairs. Unfortunately the majority policies only cover the “clean up” costs if the building covered on the policy is damaged by the falling tree.

A costly “clean up”

The “clean up” operation can prove extremely costly for your client. When large trees are involved the cost can easily climb to between R10 000 and R20 000 per tree…

An absence of cover in terms of the policy could therefore leave them seriously out of pocket.

The other common type of claim is the reinstatement of gardens, which often comes into effect following a large fire at the insured building. While the fire itself could spread and cause damage to the garden, such claims also arise as a result of the damage caused by fire engines arriving at the scene to extinguish the fire.

The “reinstatement of gardens” extension typically covers limited perils only. If the home is damaged by fire, lightning, explosion, theft, impact by vehicles, vandalism or malicious acts, then the insurer will pay the cost of re-landscaping the garden up to a certain sum, which varies from insurer to insurer.

Limited cover

The major difference between the removal of fallen trees and the reinstatement of gardens is that your trees are covered against storm and wind damage; however your general garden will not be covered as a result of the same peril. It is important to bear in mind when advising a client on insuring their garden that both extensions – fallen trees and reinstatement of garden – are limited. If a garden has been expensively landscaped then you should advise your client to increase these limits.

Garden insurance, like any other form of insurance, is there to protect your client against sudden and unforeseen events. If a site inspection reveals dying trees that pose a potential risk to the insured property, the policyholder would be expected to remove these trees at his own account prior to the policy inception.

A price-tag on paradise

As with any form of insurance you, the broker, should advise your client of the implications of not having the appropriate insurance cover in place. People often underestimate the value of their gardens and have no idea what it would cost to replace them… You should advise clients who have undertaken extensive landscaping at their properties to have a full valuation conducted and make sure they are insured for the correct amount.