Consumer Insight - Garden Crime

Our gardens are one of our greatest passions. We spend billions of pounds every year on bringing them into bloom. With garden crime on the increase, we look at how to improve your security – and also how surprisingly dangerous gardens can be!
Some 83% of the UK population has a garden and around £5 billion is spent every year on flowers, plants, gardening tools & equipment and other outdoor items.
Approximately 300,000 people visit A&E wards in the UK every year following an accident in their garden.
Garden crime is a growing problem with around 1 in 8 owners suffering theft from their gardens – a quarter of these thefts are from garden sheds. Top of the list for theft are bicycles, followed by plants, lawnmowers, tools and garden furniture.
Most garden thefts are opportunistic, but burglars will target sheds and garages and everything from expensive potted plants to outdoor gas heaters and barbeques. And they don’t stop there – gnomes, gates, paving slabs, tiles, gloves and even fish from ponds are some of the more unusual items burgled. It’s easy to leave items out in the garden when it’s a natural extension of your home, but there are various measures you can take to make your garden more secure and less attractive to thieves:
Ensure your back gate is properly secured and kept locked
Add trellis to fences to make them more difficult to climb
Make back boundaries more secure by introducing prickly hedges such as hawthorn
Don’t give thieves anywhere to hide at the front of your house. The police recommend hedges at the front of your house are a maximum height of 90cm
Lock up tools in a secure shed or garage
Use loose gravel on your paths – it’s noisy when walked on
Include your garage or shed on your house alarm
Install security lights for your garden
Secure ladders or large tools with chains to walls
Fit grilles to garage or shed windows and use blinds or curtains to hide
Fix hanging baskets out of reach or secure the rim to the bracket
Cement garden tubs in place or bolt them down through their drainage
Remove labels from valuable plants
Put your postcode on anything valuable – try an ultraviolet pen.
Customise your tools with a dab of paint – it makes them harder to sell
Check your insurance policy to ensure it covers possessions left outside the family home.

(Reproduced from allianz.co.uk web site, 21st June)

GARDIEN TIP: All good advice - a lot more of the same plus a host of solutions can be found at www.garden-security.co.uk