How do you value your Allotment ?

[sospan]

On Easter weekend my wife and I were the innocent victims of some road rage and whilst we fortunately "walked" away from the accident we did suffer injuries.

The injuries have more or less stopped us doing much since then. Because we couldn't water we lost a lot of plants from the previous years and not only couldn't develop the garden and plot but it has regressed in terms of weeds as it has been too difficult to dig or weed.

I now have to have knee surgery to correct some of the accident damage which will take me out for another 6 months at least. So I am going to lose the best part of a year of progress. No carrying anything heavy, no excessive bending etc. So digging and moving compost bags is out. I know there are a few things I can do but it is going to be really difficult without help.

One of the questions asked by the legal team was about what we have lost as part of the accident. So how do you value the time and effort of lost plants, not having the benefit of the allotment or its produce for at least a year then to try and get it back to where it was before.

Anybody had to go through something similar ?

[Logunner]

Your legal team will put the financial value together. You need to give them a time and pleasure value to you and your partner, along with what loss you have in respect crops.

[Snoop Puss]

Hello and welcome, Sospan. Really sorry to hear about the incident. I don't value my veg patch in financial terms, so I understand your difficulties. Logrunner's suggestion sounds reasonable. Plus add in the cost of buying in help to get your patch back up to scratch. Good luck.

[greenishfing]

I'm really sorry to hear of your misfortune. I' m not sure how you can put a fiscal value on something like this.
How much would it cost to get a gardener in to get it back as it was, and keep up to it until you can? The value of your crops.
The joy and mental wellbeing I get from mine however cannot be given a value.
Good luck with your recuperation.

[sospan]

I'm really sorry to hear of your misfortune. I' m not sure how you can put a fiscal value on something like this.
How much would it cost to get a gardener in to get it back as it was, and keep up to it until you can? The value of your crops.
The joy and mental wellbeing I get from mine however cannot be given a value.
Good luck with your recuperation.

Hi thanks for the reply.

Part of the problem is valuing plants that have withered in a greenhouse that have been around for years. You could buy replacements but then have to wait years to get them back to where they were.

As you say how to do you give a value to something you enjoy ?

What really surprised me was ringing around all the "gardeners" and "gardening services", how few wanted to take the work on the work. Most were quite happy to come along strim, run a rotavator over, do any pruning of bushes etc.

When I mentioned "hand digging" removing weeds and stones they all refused outright. I can see their point when they can get £25+ for cutting a lawn and do 10 or more in a day.

Using some rough rates from https://www.edwardsgardenservices.co...rdening-rates/ a gardeners rate is around £200 plus a day, so if I could actually find someone to hand dig the garden vegetable plot it would take about 10 days - £2,000+ and the allotment, 30 days.

If you were to assume you spent 2 hours per day on average on a plot and garden, 2 days a week, 100 days a year and need someone to help it would work out at £20,000

Which just seems unfeasible amount

[Thelma Sanders]

Sad to hear, but perhaps use the cost for rotovating, just this once, to keep it clear of weeds.
You will rarely get a jobbing gardener who will give your garden or plot the same care and attention as you yourself do, it's unrealistic IMO. Just cost normal garden maintenance, such as lawn and hedge cutting, rotovating.
I'd think you can only value plants at replacement cost, same as items claimed for on house insurance. I think the legal bods should be working out a figure for losing enjoyment of a hobby - rather than giving you the problem. Good luck.

[Zonmatron]

That's a rubbish situation, I'm sorry to hear that. It's tough to measure this- I have previously worked in insurance and part of the issue with valuing this is putting a real figure on as you say, your time and effort.
You could try and mock up some prospective figures as to the value of the produce you generally create- I've been diligently weighing all the produce I grow using the Real Men Sow spreadsheet and comparing it to the going price per kilo for the veg. This way I know I've grown about £20 worth of rhubarb this year. This might help, if they'll accept some sort of average from you. you could also tally your sundries- for example plant and seed costs that you know you've lost.
Best of luck.

[sospan]

Your legal team will put the financial value together. You need to give them a time and pleasure value to you and your partner, along with what loss you have in respect crops.

I don't know what the average time people spend on gardening when they have a large garden and an allotment. I am guessing a minimum of 2 hours per day, 700 hours a year, 100 days a year

Do you value it in terms of a cinema ticket £10, a theatre ticket £30, a sport ticket £70 for two hours. Or go for basic wage £8.21 an hour or professional rate £25 an hour. It is really hard to value. It is the same as value of produce.

One of the reference sites (https://www.statista.com/statistics/...nited-kingdom/ ) reckons the average family spends £4.80 a week on fruit and veg. Most of us benefit considerably more than that and even have enough to give away to others. So £20 a week £30 ?

Because, I could't collect it. I lost out on the weekly manure collection of 8-10 bags from the nearby stables and they had to find someone else - which didn't take long How do you explain to an insurance clerk the value of free #@&*

I have a 50 /50 chance of the surgery fixing the injury and it could be a very long recovery. I don't want to guess because whatever I put down, I know it is going to be challenged, whittled down etc. When I try and work out what the loss is it is either really low or crazily high.

[sospan]

Sad to hear, but perhaps use the cost for rotovating, just this once, to keep it clear of weeds.
You will rarely get a jobbing gardener who will give your garden or plot the same care and attention as you yourself do, it's unrealistic IMO. Just cost normal garden maintenance, such as lawn and hedge cutting, rotovating.
I'd think you can only value plants at replacement cost, same as items claimed for on house insurance. I think the legal bods should be working out a figure for losing enjoyment of a hobby - rather than giving you the problem. Good luck.

Part of the problem is that we had the allotment and the new house / garden within the last 3 years. As per usual they were both over grown and we had the usual fight against bind weed, rampant raspberries, deadly nightshade and the pernicious weeds etc. We have gone backward in the fight since Easter as they are now reestablishing themselves.

Rotavating would only take a few hours (£150) and obviously make it much worse.

I know what you are saying about valuing plants but unlike clothes some plants increase in value as they mature. It wouldn't be a pleasant conversation if I told my wife that the insurance company offered £3 each for some giant trumpet lilly's she had looked after for years. Some plants had sentimental value; bought for anniversaries, moved with us from other properties or salvaged from deceased family members gardens.

Really seems to be an impossible task

[1Bee]

I'm so sorry to hear about your situation.

I might be tempted to call the RHS and ask if they have any guidance on valuing mature specimens... I wonder if someone somewhere has a formula of value accrued over time. I think I would try and find the replacement value for the most mature specimens I could find and/or add a percentage per year looked after?

Whatever you do, explain how you've come to your figures, and let your insurers take it from there, don't sweat whether you've done it the 'right' way when there is no right way to follow.

And claiming for a certain amount of hours per week for a gardener's hourly rate sounds like the bare minimum to me. You may need to explain to the uneducated that it's not just lost time, but reversion to a poor state because of lack of care.

Good luck!

[sospan]

I'm so sorry to hear about your situation.

I might be tempted to call the RHS and ask if they have any guidance on valuing mature specimens... I wonder if someone somewhere has a formula of value accrued over time. I think I would try and find the replacement value for the most mature specimens I could find and/or add a percentage per year looked after?

Whatever you do, explain how you've come to your figures, and let your insurers take it from there, don't sweat whether you've done it the 'right' way when there is no right way to follow.

And claiming for a certain amount of hours per week for a gardener's hourly rate sounds like the bare minimum to me. You may need to explain to the uneducated that it's not just lost time, but reversion to a poor state because of lack of care.

Good luck!

Thanks, we are members of the RHS and have given them a call. They though it was an interesting question but didn't have any established figures. The only thing they suggested was to find some of the detailed plot production figures from the 1940's and work it out in today's money. That would be quite an interesting exercise in itself.

I did find an old article from 2008 (https://www.independent.co.uk/money/...tml#r3z-addoor) that valued the savings then at £1,500 a year,

When I was chatting to the lady at the RHS about the figures she was stunned about how much it was coming out at - £20,000+

[ESBkevin]

Add up the hours required to get the ground back to the same usable condition. Multiply that by an average rate for a contract gardener to give a labour cost (you can't garden yourself so have to pay someone else over a period of time).
It is possible to buy substantial well developed plants (look at all those TV make over programs) so get prices for what you need for replacements or near replacements.
You can't cost the enjoyment or exercise value, but the courts would typically allow compensation for your health condition to encompass that (for example a 21 YO professional athlete would get more than a 65 YO tv addict). Be guided by the legal team there.
It might help your case if a local landscape/garden contractor gave a quote for all the work required to your spec. and an idea of time scale. Independent paperwork trumps our best guestimate.

[greenishfing]

I just hope that you get your health back. I don't believe you will ever get back a reasonable value for the time and effort that you have put into your allotment......but money isn't everything. The benefits that come from having an allotment are beyond price....and you will eventually be able to go back to it.
My sister has a saying "There is nothing that can happen that is so bad that something good can't come out of it".
I really hope this applies to you.
It did for me. If something awful hadn't happened to me ( many years ago now) I would never have never met my husband and my life would have been very different.

[Bluenowhere]

Not sure if it helps but the cost for professional gardeners to maintain the communal gardens at the flats when I was on the management committee - pruning, hand weeding, etc was £250 per month around five years ago and was in London.

I know I spend longer on the allotment and my own garden than they spent but partly that is improving rather than keeping it ticking over and some is for my own enjoyment but the monthly cost is probably the sort of value that might be accepted.

In terms of the produce I’d value it at the estimated cost to purchase it instead.

There are a number of companies that supply mature plants to garden design companies should be possible to get replacement prices for what has died.