Landscaping spans two businesses that insurers price differently. One is maintenance: mowing, hedges, planting, seasonal work. The other is construction: excavation, drainage, walls, patios, decking and machinery. The same company often does both and is rated on the heavier half.
Underground services, the claim nobody budgets for
Excavation near a property means water mains, gas, electricity and telecoms in ground nobody has surveyed. Striking one produces damage to a utility, possible injury, and consequential losses that dwarf the job value. Many liability wordings treat damage to underground services as a separate insured item with its own limit, and some exclude it unless service drawings were obtained and a locator used. Landscapers who dig should read that clause before the first spade goes in.
Machinery, and the people operating it
Mowers, chippers, stump grinders, mini excavators and dumpers move a landscaping business into plant territory. Owned plant needs a plant section, hired plant needs a hired in section because the hire contract puts the risk on the hirer, and the operators need employers' liability with an accurate description of what they operate. Insurers also ask about training records for the higher risk machines, because a chipper or a stump grinder claim is rarely small.
Hard landscaping is construction, and gets priced like it
Retaining walls, driveways, drainage and structural decking are construction work with construction consequences. A wall that fails, a driveway that floods a neighbour, a patio laid to the wrong fall: each of these is a claim about the work rather than an accident, and where the landscaper also designed the solution it may be a professional indemnity claim as well as a public liability one. Businesses that design and build should hold both.
Tools, the van and work in other people's gardens
A landscaping business carries expensive portable equipment to a different address every day, which makes tool theft the most frequent claim in the trade. Tools cover conditions about overnight vehicle storage apply as they do for any trade. Beyond that, every job happens on property belonging to a client, so damage to the client's own garden, driveway or building is in the care custody and control territory that public liability handles unevenly, and it is worth checking how the wording deals with it.
Questions people ask about landscaping insurance
Is damage to underground services covered?
Often as a separate insured item with its own limit, and sometimes only where service drawings were obtained and a locator used. Read that clause before excavating.
Does landscaping insurance cover hired machinery?
Only with a hired in plant section. The hire agreement makes the hirer responsible, and that is a contractual liability rather than a negligence one.
Do I need professional indemnity as a landscaper?
If you design as well as build, yes. A claim that a wall, drainage or level design was wrong is not a public liability claim.