The Growing Garden Trend

There was once a time when our gardens were either a place for growing vegetables, a way for the green fingered folk amongst us to get to grips with Mother Nature or simply a bit of a burden. Now, however, our gardens are as much of a statement about our personal tastes and styles as the interiors of our homes. Whether you like to use your garden for socialising, parties and barbecues, or for sunbathing on the occasional sunny day in summer, chances are you have invested some capital in making your garden look great.

The trend for reality TV shows is undoubtedly partly responsible for our renewed interest in making our garden a pleasant environment to spend time in. Watching others get swish garden ‘makeovers’ has clearly inspired millions of people to start building verandas and installing water features, let alone smarting up their flower beds with a couple of exotic breeds. However, the money spent on our gardens is not always reflected in our home insurance policy.

There are only a handful of insurance companies in the UK who offer garden contents cover at all, and not always as standard. Kwik Fit Insurance offer garden cover in their policy but anything in excess of this must be negotiated over the phone, so do investigate their website to see what kind of home insurance policy can apply to gardens.  Surveys show that many people are happy to pay anything between £3000 and £6000 for a designer revamp of their garden and it is thought that the average household contains around £300 of garden related valuables. From this we may conclude that there are many of us out there whose gardens form a highly valuable asset to our properties.

Garden equipment theft is also rife. One in ten people will suffer a garden robbery during their lives, with the culprits pinching anything from the garden gnome by the side of the pond to the lawnmower to hanging baskets and even the odd shrub or two. Whether you choose to switch to an insurance company who includes garden cover as standard or whether you decide to simply give your existing provider a call in order to see what they might be able to offer you at an extra cost, it is important to consider the value of your garden when your insurance policy is next up for renewal.