Cleaning up paint/stain stripper

[Anonymous]

I bought a house back in March, and 6 months later then wooden railing in the front of the house desperately needed to be repainted.

The paint stripper I used (Behr) was no good, made a huge mess. Took 3 rounds of applying the paint stripper then scrubbing and rinsing then waiting for it to dry then scraping and sanding to get about 50% of the paint off. I gave up and started putting paint down. Now I'm deliberating to what extent I need to be cleaning out the surrounding areas. Any ideas?

I rinsed the area, but the problem is below the railing is a large flower bed filled with soil. There was some flowers there, but the previous owners got rid of the most of them and there wasn't much left. I was planning on putting in some new soil and planting there - but the soil got absolutely drenched in water and paint stripper and I'm not sure if I need to get rid of the existing soil in order for things to grow there. I also have dogs, and I wouldn't want their access to that soil to be detrimental to their health.

Thoughts?