Experts warn Homeowners of the dangers of digging too deeply in their gardens

Half of homeowners have admitted to burying items in their garden. That’s according to a new survey by Toolstation of 1,013 UK homeowners with gardens. To dig into this further, the tool retailer also asked homeowners and tradespeople for the strangest items they’ve found when digging in the garden.

Asking homeowners: What strange items have you found digging in your garden?

5% found the body of a former pet from the previous owner
7% found money
13% found gardening equipment and tools from the previous owner
19% found household rubbish
Some of the more unique responses we received included a photo album from the 1900’s, a bra, cans of beer, a very old motorcycle, old pottery, Victorian bottles, a WW2 bunker and even a well.

Asking tradespeople: What items have you found digging in gardens on jobs?

The tamer answers included grass snakes and slowworms, which quickly progressed to a mattress, buried clothes, bones, a horse skeleton, a car (Mini) and an air-raid shelter from WW2. One gardener from the East Midlands said, “A cannonball is the most interesting thing I have found, but I have also dug up a car and the body of a customer’s old pet”.

More than a third of homeowners (35%) revealed they had buried a pet in the garden, although only a quarter (24%) of those did not move the burial site when they moved home.

Gardening and landscaping experts advise homeowners to proceed with caution when digging their gardens

Before digging around for buried treasure, trade professionals often use specialised equipment like CAT Scanners to identify potential hazards. Extreme caution should be taken to avoid damage to your property.

One gardener from the Southwest said, “Internet cables, irrigation pipes and outdoor power cables can be found at shallow depths. They can be difficult to spot as there’s no easy way to identify which are which”.

“You should be mindful of power lines and telephone lines above ground. Below ground, you can have power cables, water supply, gas supply, sewerage, and drainage. Power supply cables and gas supply are colour coded and mostly protected, while manhole covers or similar in a garden will indicate sewerage and drainage.”

Damaging pipes and cables associated with your property would not only be expensive to repair but could also be potentially dangerous.

Another landscaper agreed, advising the following, “Dig down with caution! Plans are not always available. Items are buried by previous occupants or forgotten about by the present residents. I have uncovered many hazards, too many to mention. Make no assumptions.”

A quarter of homeowners think they’ve never made a mistake when gardening

Of those gardeners who admitted to making mistakes believed their most common mistakes included:

watering too much or too little (28%)
not killing the roots properly when weeding (27%)
not mowing the lawn properly (22%)

However, the results differed when the same question was put towards professionals. Toolstation asked their panel of gardening and landscaping experts on what the most common gardening mistakes they had seen on jobs.

planting a tree or plant which grows too big in the wrong location (71%)
not maintaining the lawn properly (64%)
improper maintenance to keep the garden in good condition (57%)