Should You Insure Your Landscaping?

Should You Insure Your Landscaping?

You've bought a house and insured the structure, the furniture and your most prized possessions.  Should you also insure your trees and shrubs?

Check your homeowner's policy.  You'll probably find that coverage for your landscape is quite limited.  Most basic homeowner's policies pay a certain percentage, say 5%, of the total coverage limit of the home for damaged landscaping, with payouts for any one tree, shrub or other plant capped at $5,000.

Homeowners' policies typically only cover losses in certain situations — like fire, lightning, explosions, theft, riot and civil commotion or damage from passing cars. If a tree falls on an insured structure during a wind, ice, snow or hailstorm, policies will pay to remove the tree and to repair the structure. But they usually won't pay to replace a tree felled by a storm.

Since weather-watchers have predicted more severe storms in the coming years, many homeowners are looking to add wind riders to their policies, but check with your carrier, since not every insurance company offers such policies or riders.

Even if you can't get or don't have insurance on your trees and incur a loss, you still may be able to claim a deduction for such a casualty loss on your federal income tax.  The Internal Revenue Service defines such a loss as "resulting from an identifiable event of sudden, unexpected, or unusual nature," and includes the usual incidents that most insurance companies cover, as well as storms, floods, vandalism and soil and air pollution.