Call Before You Dig: Safe Landscaping Practices

After the snow thawed this spring, I took a look at our yard and winced. I am lucky enough to live on a beautifully landscaped street, but ours needed serious help.

With the rain finally letting up and National Garden Week’s arrival, I started doing research on how to revamp our yard.

Amidst my search for full-sun annuals and what type of mulch would match best with the facade of my house, I came across some interesting information.

If you haven’t heard of National Fuel’s “Call Before You Dig” initiative, here’s a rundown.

Whether you’re planting a garden, building a deck, or installing a mailbox, anytime you start a project that involves digging it is necessary to call 8-1-1. That not only applies to DIY projects, calling before hiring a professional to do a job in your yard is also required. 

You may be wondering why this is so important.

Without knowing what’s below your projected dig-site, you risk damaging gas, electric, communications, water, and sewer lines.

Here are a handful of additional facts from the Common Ground Alliance:

• Every six minutes an underground utility line is damaged when someone fails to call 8-1-1 first
• Damage occurs less than 1% of the time when a call is made to 8-1-1
• Striking just one line can lead to injury, fines, repair costs, and outages
• 40% of homeowners within the nation will put people at risk by not calling 8-1-1 before starting a project

Once I was in the clear, I purchased a variety of full-sun annuals and some mulch to begin revamping the front landscaping. My stepdad kindly came over and helped my husband weed, turn over the soil, and rake out the mulch. Then I brought the kids outside to help me place the flowers where they should go, and Tyler planted them!

It made a world of difference — and for a landscaping bed that we hadn’t touched in at least a year, it only took 3 hours from start to finish. Not bad!

The best part was having the peace of mind that all of our safety ducks were in a row and we could focus on having fun with the task!

What kind of digging projects do you have coming up?