One of the questions I often get as The Mini Digger Guy is:

“When you dig out my garden, what happens to all the waste?”

It’s an important part of planning your project, whether you’re digging for a pond, levelling ground for turf, or preparing for a patio. Here’s a clear guide to what happens to the different types of waste and the options for getting rid of it.

What happens to soil waste when using a mini digger?

If your project produces mainly soil (for example, when I dig out a pond, foundation trench, or landscaping area), often that soil doesn’t need to leave the garden. It can be spread elsewhere to level the ground, fill in dips, or create raised beds.

This is the most cost-effective option because you avoid paying for removal.

What happens to roots, rubble, and stones dug out of a garden?

When I prepare a garden for turfing or landscaping, I often uncover rubble, rocks, bricks, roots, and other “rubbish” that can’t just be reused. These materials usually need to be taken away.

Here are the three most common options:

1. Skip hire for garden waste

• Best for: Medium projects with space for a skip.

• Pros: Everything is contained neatly in one place; easy to fill with a wheelbarrow.

• Cons: Needs a driveway or roadside permit; you have to guess the right size; skips can be in the way if left too long.

2. Grab lorry collection

• Best for: Large garden projects with lots of rubble or soil.

• Pros: Fast and efficient; removes large amounts in one go; no skip left on site.

• Cons: Needs space for the lorry to park and extend its grab arm; waste must be piled somewhere accessible.

3. Hippo bags (or similar)

• Best for: Smaller projects or gardens without space for a skip.

• Pros: Bags are delivered flat and don’t take up space until you need them; flexible collection when you’re ready.

• Cons: Can get expensive if you need several bags; the collection lorry needs access to where the bags are placed.

Which garden waste removal option is cheapest?

• Cheapest overall: Reusing soil in your own garden.

• For small jobs: A Hippo bag is often the most affordable.

• For medium jobs: A skip usually makes sense.

• For large jobs: A grab lorry is the most cost-effective per tonne of waste.

Do I need to arrange waste removal before booking a mini digger?

It’s a good idea to think about waste before I start work. I can always advise on the best option for your specific project, and sometimes we can save you money by reusing what we dig out.

Mini digger and driver hire with waste advice included

I provide mini digger and driver hire across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire, helping homeowners and landscapers with everything from pond digs and garden clearance to levelling and turf preparation.

When you hire me, you’re not just getting the mini digger and operator – you’re also getting advice on the most efficient and affordable way to handle your garden waste (and advice on all aspects of garden landscaping, driveway construction, etc.).

Common questions I get about garden waste and digger hire

Q: Can you put garden soil in a skip?

Yes – but it fills quickly and gets heavy, so make sure you order a skip big enough.

Q: Is a grab lorry cheaper than a skip?

For larger amounts of waste, yes. Grab lorries can take up to 16 tonnes at once.

Q: Do I need permission for a skip on the road?

Yes, you’ll usually need a permit from your local council if you don’t have space on your property.

Book your mini digger and driver hire in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire & Cambridgeshire

If you’ve got a project coming up, I’ll make the digging easy and help you plan what to do with the waste.

👉 Get in touch via my contact form below to book your mini digger and driver hire today.

Get in touch to discuss your mini garden digger project

Fill in the form below to discuss your mini garden digger project!

Two days and two skips later, we’d removed all the bamboo from across the entire garden

There’s a reason why “bamboo removal” has suddenly become a common Google search term… it’s an incredibly resilient plant that will take over your garden and cause major issues down the line.

A recent customer planted 6 small bamboo roots 10 years ago after a trip to China; fast forward to today and the bamboo is 12 feet tall with a root network that has spread over 16 feet across the lawn, with bamboo shoots popping up in random places all over the lawn and trying to make its way into the drains and footings. She knew she had a major issue developing if she didn’t deal with it soon, so she contacted me to help her with my mini digger-powered bamboo removal service!

Bamboo removal step 1: removing the bamboo shoots

At 12 feet tall, 40 feet long, and 3 feet deep, this was some very well-established bamboo! You’d never manage to dig this out by hand – even my mini digger was struggling at times, but luckily my “ripper tooth” bucket was able to rip through the root and ground in front of it so we could dig it out.

Once removed, we loaded it into wheelbarrows and dumped it into a skip to be taken away. The skip was completely full by the end of the day!

Bamboo removal step 2: digging out contaminated turf and the rhizome root network

With bamboo removal, you can’t just stop at pulling out the main shoots and root. If you leave any of the “rhizomes” in the ground, it’ll grow back. The rhizome are the long and thin roots that grow outwards away from the bamboo, usually right under your turf or less than 10cm under the ground. Bamboo can regrow from any of this left in the ground, so while it might seem dramatic, in some cases (like this one), we have to scrape up the surrounding turf to expose the rhizomes and then pull them out. Then we dig over the ground using a riddle and rake bucket to filter the soil for any remaining bamboo rhizomes, plucking them out as we go for disposal (along with any rocks and rubble we find).

Bamboo removal step 3: raking and fine-raking the soil to prepare for new turf

Once we’re confident all the bamboo is out of the ground, we then rake and fine-rake the soil to prepare it for new turf to go down.

The bamboo rhizomes in this garden had grown over 16 feet under the turf, so quite a big area had to be dug up and turned over to ensure it would never come back. It looks a lot, but turf is cheap and we left the garden ready for the new turf to go straight down. This is certainly a much better option than ignoring the bamboo problem and having it damage more of your garden, your drains, your footings, and those of your neighbours!

Bamboo removal finished!

So there you have it – a serious bamboo removal issue sorted in just two days with my mini digger and driver hire service. You don’t need to pay thousands and thousands of pounds to “bamboo removal specialists”, just contact me to discuss getting rid of your bamboo problems. The sooner you act, the better. We had to dig up the turf over 16 feet away from the bamboo in this case because that’s how far the bamboo rhizomes had spread; if the customer had dealt with the issue sooner, less turf would have needed to come up, so don’t delay, contact me today to get started!

Update: one year later

And just in case you weren’t sure if you believed that a mini digger and driver hire service is the best way of getting rid of bamboo, here’s a recent photo taken a year later showing new turf where the bamboo was and zero bamboo shoots!

Get in touch to discuss your mini garden digger project

Fill in the form below to discuss your mini garden digger project!

My son and I recently completed a big 2-day mini garden digger project right in the heart of Cambridge, including digging out for a big shed base, a deep trench for an air source heater, a pond, and a sunken trampoline.

All this work would have taken a couple of weeks if done by hand – but took just two days with my mini garden digger!

The sunken trampoline

The customer asked us to sink a 12-foot trampoline into the ground to make it much safer for her grandkids to use. We followed the instructions to the T, creating a platform around the edge for the trampoline to sit on, and then dishing the ground down to the right level.

We topped it off by laying a geotextile membrane to allow rainwater to drain but to prevent weeds from growing underneath. 

The shed/summerhouse base

Deep trench for an air source heat pump pipe

We carefully removed the existing turf in sections and put it to one side, and piled up the soil alongside the trench so it can easily be backfilled when the air source heat pump installers have laid the pipe. The turf sections can then be placed back on top – and you’d never know a trench had been dug!

Digging out a multi-level pond (to the design set by a garden designer)

Get in touch to discuss your mini garden digger project

Fill in the form below to discuss your mini garden digger project!