Should You Take Out Insurance
Just to Cover 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. According to Rhonda Linnett Graber, managing director for personal insurance at Bollinger, Inc., a Short Hills, N.J., insurance brokerage, most basic homeowner's policies pay a certain percentage, perhaps 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.

What's more, 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.

That's what Carl Shaw, a Boca Raton, Fla., electrical engineer discovered when Hurricane Wilma toppled eight huge fica trees in his yard a couple of years ago. The giant trees uprooted his irrigation system and ripped up his lawn when they fell -- and since they missed the house, none of the $35,000 worth of damage was covered by insurance. "It was a very expensive lesson," says Mr. Shaw, who has replaced the trees with more wind-resistant native palms.

Since weather-watchers have predicted more severe storms in the coming years, many homeowners are looking to add wind riders to their policies. "Having such insurance may be a prudent investment," says Kathleen Wolf, a research social scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Ms. Wolf recently published a review of several regional studies of landscape value, and found that mature trees added 2% to 15% to a home's selling price.

Not every insurance company offers such a policy, though, says Ms. Graber, and those that do, charge a premium upward of $5 per $1,000 of coverage for a typical policy. Some companies also allow clients to bump up the amount paid per tree or shrub for an additional premium, which could run as high as $18 per $1,000 of coverage.

If you don't have insurance on your trees, you still may be able to claim a deduction for 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.

Contact an arborist who has had experience in appraising the sort of loss you have experienced, and get a written appraisal as soon as possible after the damage. Although the appraisal methods that are used vary and may be governed by your state's laws, they should take into account the plant's size, species, condition and location.

-- June Fletcher is a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal and the author of "House Poor" (Harper Collins, 2005). Her "House Talk" column appears most Mondays on RealEstateJournal.com. Email your questions about the residential real-estate market. Please include your name, city and state. If you don't want your name used in our column, please indicate that. Due to volume of mail received, we regret that we cannot answer every question.

Share your comments on the House Talk discussion board.

Email your comments to june.fletcher@wsj.com.