Income Protection For Gardeners

Two exposures define maintenance gardening, and both are about holding a machine rather than lifting a load.

Hedge trimmers, strimmers and mowers all transmit vibration into the hands, and a full-time gardener accumulates serious exposure across a season. The result is hand-arm vibration syndrome: numbness, tingling and blanching in the fingers, which does not reverse. Separately, trimming a hedge means holding a heavy vibrating tool above shoulder height for long stretches, which is why shoulders and necks fail in this trade as well as hands.

Both are gradual, which is the honest argument for arranging cover early rather than once there is a record of symptoms. Numbness in the fingers is exactly the history that gets examined if a claim follows, so it is better declared than treated as normal for the job.

Garden maintenance earns most of its money between March and October, and almost nobody allows for that properly when buying cover.

Insuring a figure based on summer takings looks sensible and will not be supported, because benefit is normally measured against actual earnings. The number to protect is a defensible annual figure from accounts, averaged across the winter as well.

The flip side matters more here than in most trades: being signed off in May costs several times what the same six weeks would cost in December. That is an argument for a short deferred period, because the expensive absences come exactly when savings are least likely to have recovered from winter.

Sole trader gardeners have no death in service, so the household has only what has been arranged.

The round has some value and it is fragile. A list of regular customers can be sold to another gardener, but it depends on continuity of service, so it decays quickly once nobody is turning up.

That makes the business a poor substitute for cover. The sum worth covering is the mortgage, van and machinery finance, and the years of income a household would need.

The ending here is cumulative rather than sudden: hands with vibration damage, or shoulders that will not hold a trimmer up.

That leaves somebody fit for a great deal of work and unable to do this, which is where income protection runs out once suitable alternative work is judged available.

A lump sum funds a move the knowledge supports: garden design, horticultural consultancy, plant nursery or retail work, or running a business with employed gardeners doing the machine work.

Plenty of gardeners build up to employing one or two people, which changes the calculation.

The crew can keep cutting during an absence, which protects the round, but quoting, customer relationships and the scheduling usually sit with the owner alone. Wages, van finance and machinery costs continue regardless.

Cover can be sized to include those continuing costs as well as personal income. Where there is a limited company, executive income protection lets the company pay for it, which is normally more efficient than funding it from taxed income.