Can I keep some of my excavated soil for the garden?

Often yes, where the material is genuinely suitable — good quality topsoil in particular can be worth retaining for garden beds or landscaping, rather than removed along with less suitable subsoil.

Worth discussing this directly with your contractor before excavation begins, since separating retainable material from what needs to be removed is easier to plan for upfront than to sort out after excavation is already underway.

Not all excavated soil is genuinely suitable for garden use — deeper subsoil can be quite different in composition to topsoil, worth assessing rather than assuming everything excavated is equally useful for planting.

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