When can I have my pond?

Everyone says you can't have a pond when you have young kids. But at what point can you have a pond? My son is 3 now. Am I still banned from digging a pond?

If I can't have a pond, can I have some other water feature? I don't really want a fountain, I want something that could easily pass for natural, and that the many frogs that pass through our garden every year might actually stop to use.

 

You can have a mesh no the pond that you can walk on - its an inch below the surface, so not easy to detect. I expect it will keep Mr and Mrs Heron out too!

 

I had this problem when Grandchildren arrived,the pond had to go unless I could make it safe,so we made this cover from 2" reinforcing metal ,it takes an adults weight and certainly deteres the Heron.
So it is possible to have a pond and children, they can watch and feed the fish safely and they love to stick a piece of wood in to see how deep it is....

 

Me, I would not have pond until the kids are older.

Reasons:
Yes you can get a mesh that sits just below the water, but not only is it not cheap, a small child can still drown with it.

A "cover it grille" has to be custom made made, and then plants start to grow through it, which if not kept cut back soon become a pain in the.......

You can also get netting, but that is only good to stop falling leaves.

Any form of netting / grille spoils a pond.

Wildlife

But wildlife as you have mentioned like open water, but then so do small children, wait a couple more years, and build a water feature in the mean time.

 

Not as much as not having a pond at all !!

 

If you want a pond to encourage the frogs and other wildlife (and to interest your son), I'd go for a very shallow one with very gently sloping sides - e.g. max depth 12"-15", with lots of really shallow water just cm/inches deep. You'll get far more life in this than in a 2'-3' deep fish/lily pond, plus you'll be able to see it much easily (loads of species live right round the margins in an inch or two of water, very few thrive out of sight in the murky depths). Plus, of course, it saves an awful lot of digging.

It's worth digging slightly deeper than the intended water depth to allow for a layer of e.g. clean sand over the liner (especially near the edge), for protection and planting into, and for a bit of silt/leaf etc. accumulation.

Regarding safety, my understanding is that the greatest drowning risk is in children aged 1-2, i.e. old enough to crawl/toddle over and fall in, not old enough to get out again. Common sense would also suggest that a pond with very shallow edges is going to be safer, but obviously you have to decide what you think is safe for your son.

The 'Creating Garden Ponds for Wildlife' leaflet from Pond Conservation is worth looking at - their advice is very sound for wildlife-oriented ponds. Download here. The leaflet 'Garden ponds and Boggy Areas' from Natural England is also useful.

 

Sorry KingEdward, your understanding is not quite right.
ROSPA say between 0 -2 is the greatest risk, but they suggest that children up to the age of 6 can be at risk from drowning in an unprotected pond.

Which is why I said I wouldn't have a pond until the kids are older. I would suggest that very gently sloping sides are worse, as the child can then walk in and trip.....

Click me

 

I don't see anything in those stats that contradicts my previous post - the great majority of drownings in ponds are of children aged 1-2. I don't want anyone to put their child(ren) at risk, but given the huge importance of garden ponds to wildlife, not least amphibians, it is quite wrong to overstate the danger. During 1995-2005, a total of 10 children aged 3-5 drowned in garden ponds - that's less than one a year. More children of the same age actually drowned in the bath - do you suggest everyone should rip those out as well?

 

if in doubt couldnt you fence the pond off, with a gate in the fence?

or maybe trellis isntead of a fence? just an idea

 

Thanks all. As usual, lots to think about.

The lad doesn't get left unsupervised in the garden, but of course kids have an uncanny ability to be standing next to you one minute, and then at the other end of the garden poking at things the next, so safety is still an issue.

I think I'm probably going to skip the pond again for this year, mostly because I still have so much to do, but partly because of safety concerns.

I would love a pond, but I have to be realistic. Maybe next year when the garden is somewhere near built, maybe then I'll see what I can do.

 

One further point is that it's a good idea to fill ponds with rainwater if possible, rather than tapwater which is generally rather too high in nitrates, so it might be worth planning for an autumn project so it can fill over winter (especially if you can get water diverted in from the roof).

 

KingEdward, if you want to be silly that is your choice.

A bath is for bathing in, a pond isn't.

One death because of a pond is one death too many.

 

I can't speak for King Eddy, but I didn't take his answer to be silly. I interpreted it as him putting risk into perspective and maybe highlighting that there are other things that pose a high risk to kids that we tend not to even think about. Perhaps another example is that there are many very common yet extremely toxic plants that grow many gardens. Foxglove for example. Young kids taste test everything, so toxic plants should be more of a no-no than a shallow pond. Of course there is never any point putting unnecessary risk on anyone, but to run screaming from the idea of one risk while completely ignoring and dismissing other risks doesn't seem logical to me.