Garden lovers fail to get adequate home insurance

With the Met Office predicting a summer heatwave, more and more people will be taking pride in their gardens, but some are not checking to see if their home insurance covers their valuable outdoor items.

Virgin Money said that households are spending over £4 billion a year on their gardens and thieves are taking advantage, with one in seven seeing some sort of theft every year.

There have been reports of robberies involving expensive stone lions and rare trees costing hundreds of pounds and the home insurance firm has advised gardeners to check their policies.

Grant Bather, spokesperson for Virgin Money, said: We're often guilty of thinking that leaving valuable items outside in the garden means they are safe. Sadly with garden theft on the rise that is not the case and you need to have adequate insurance in place for everything from the garden gnomes to the barbecue and bikes .

Home insurance comparison site Gocompare.com recently warned that one in four British people have suffered property theft or damage in their gardens .