Said It Here

How to get rid of a bunch of old landscaping rock

Landscaping rock is often too heavy and voluminous for regular trash pickup, and uncertainty over whether it counts as construction waste leaves homeowners stuck. Trying to clear it out by hand is extremely slow, while renting heavy equipment like an excavator risks digging up too much underlying soil.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    renting a small dumpster from a local company
  2. 2
    checking with a local landfill
  3. 3
    listing the rocks for free on Facebook Marketplace
  4. 4
    Digging the river rock out by hand
  5. 5
    Considering renting an excavator

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/Landscaping2 people · September 2026

I want to replace these with something more appealing but idk how to dispose of these? Would these be considered construction waste or can I just put in the trash?source ↗

kiwi_1122 · r/Landscaping · 3 upvotes

We’ve tried digging it out by hand but it’s way too slow. Put in probably 10hrs now and only gotten a 2x5ft section done.source ↗

We originally thought about renting an excavator but weren’t sure if that was the way to go since we just wanna remove the top few inches and not really any soil.source ↗

neuronerd88 · r/Landscaping · 2 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised