Landscaping Insurance
Sutherland Insurance places landscaping insurance for Ontario landscape and grounds-maintenance businesses, covering general liability, completed operations, mobile equipment, tools and commercial auto. It is an independent brokerage that has placed commercial business from Guelph, Ontario since 1870. An in-house claims representative is available to every client who has a claim.
- Line
- Commercial insurance
- Area served
- All of Ontario
- Claims support
- In-house claims representative available to every client on a claim
Who needs landscaping insurance?
Landscaping insurance applies to residential and commercial landscape contractors, grounds-maintenance crews, tree-trimming and arborist businesses, hardscaping and retaining-wall installers, irrigation and sprinkler fitters, and operators who add snow clearing over the winter.
The heavier exposures sit in the specialist work rather than in routine maintenance. Tree work puts falling limbs over property and people; hardscaping and retaining walls carry structural consequences that appear years later; irrigation faults produce water damage claims against completed work; and winter snow clearing brings slip-and-fall liability that insurers rate as a separate operation, not as an extension of the summer business.
What can an Ontario landscaping insurance policy cover?
What a policy can cover
- Commercial general liability: third-party bodily injury and property damage arising from operations
- Completed operations: claims arising after a job is finished and handed over
- Inland marine: specialist equipment in transit or at a temporary site
- Tools and equipment: theft of or damage to portable tools and equipment away from the premises
- Commercial auto: vehicles registered to the business and driven for business purposes
- Hired and non-owned auto: liability arising from vehicles the business does not own but directs
Commonly excluded under standard Ontario landscaping insurance wordings
- The cost of correcting faulty workmanship itself, as distinct from resulting damage
- Workplace injury to the business’s own employees, which falls to WSIB coverage in Ontario
- Wear, tear and gradual deterioration
- Gradual pollution and contamination
- Liquidated damages or penalties accepted under contract
Exclusions vary by insurer and by policy form; the issued policy governs.
Frequently asked questions
Is snow clearing covered under a landscaping policy?
Snow and ice management is rated as its own operation. Slip-and-fall liability drives that class, and an insurer needs the winter work declared at the time the policy is written for the liability section to answer a claim arising from it.
Is a ride-on mower covered as equipment or as a vehicle?
Self-propelled equipment that is not registered for highway use is insured as mobile equipment under the commercial policy, alongside the rest of the plant. A vehicle plated for the road is rated as commercial auto instead, and trailers are scheduled separately again, each with its own limit.
Do clients require proof of insurance?
Commercial property managers, municipalities and general contractors routinely require a certificate of insurance naming them as an additional insured before a landscaping contract is awarded, and many set a minimum liability limit in the contract itself. Sutherland Insurance issues certificates for the clients whose policies it places.
Get a landscaping insurance quote
A licensed Sutherland Insurance broker compares the available markets on every quote request.
Get a landscaping insurance quote Call 519-822-0160
A real person answers, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.