Child Friendly Wildlife Pond

[charlieb]

Originally Posted by wildaboutlife

all the advice says a pond is essential.

A pond isn't essential for wildlife! Just don't cut your lawn so often (thats our excuse ), get some native plants or a compost heap.

[Dawn Skye]

I was interested in a child friendly pond. Even the best behaved 2 yr old is in danger. I knew a family whose grandchild had drowned in the pond. I want something safe!

[Kayleigh]

There are lots of pond covers on the market for around £100 there are some that are raised to life wildlife in and out.

safety pond covers - Google Search

[tom00_uk]

any ponds child friendly if they are supervised and almost any pond with out constant supervision, just like a bath tub has the potential to be very unfriendly.

a stable door style back door will allow you to air the house and know they are not going outside, or fencing off with a locked gate the pond section of garden would also work.

if you have the money then getting a nice looking raised cover thats almost sculptural like Creative Pond Covers go from wild to architectural | Water Gardener Magazine.com would work, the child even if they fell against it would bounce off onto the surrounding ground

some people use a system that if you do a online search make them look like Jesus and walk on water, but you still then have the chance of a few cm's depth of water that if a child gets access to a pond with out supervision could result the worst.

[Kate_Izzy]

I know this is an old post but this is for anybody else that's interested in a child friendly pond.
The main problem with ponds is that most are designed for fish and so are deep and because a lot of people want a smallish pond then there is normally a steep drop.

Obviously no pond (or water butt, bucket, bath) is 100% safe but I would rather my child learns to be safe around water than avoid it altogether.
The safest kind of pond (in my opinion) is one that is very gently sloping, which is also much better for wildlife.
Ponds don't need to be deep to be useful - 8 to 12" at the deepest is fine - most of it only wants to be about an inch or two deep as this is where a lot of wildlife likes spend it's time and also it can be used for birds to bathe. Obviously when it's only shallow then it dries out quicker so ideally it would be as big as you can afford to make it (mine's about 2m) but natural ponds dry out in summer so a lot of our wildlife is adapted to this.

Since putting my pond in last autumn, I've had a lot more birds in the garden (including ones I'd never had before) that come to drink and bathe. A couple of old branches around and in the pond act as perches.

My daughter was 2 1/2 when I put in my pond and has been great around it - she does occasionally go in for a paddle but even the deepest part of the pond doesn't come above the top of her wellies.
I would probably wait until about this age though unless you could securely fence it off.

I'll try and get some pictures of mine up but having a few computer problems at the moment.

[softcheaks]

I'd love a pond in our garden, but with a fairly small, but nature friendly garden, a puppy & 2 young children I'm on the hunt for a bird bath instead, my neighbour moved out recently and i should have asked her if we could keep it, i'm sure all the birds miss her...

Going back to the child friendly pond, i am very excited about the primary school my daughter is going to start in September. It has a fantastic large outdoor area and a pond! I was unsure at first as it seemed just to be a securly covered water feature at ground level but ahh, ha it not, it is a real pond and it's now starting to take shape. It looks professionally constructed and installed, is prob about 2m sq, has timber boards similar to decking around the edges and a solid green steel mesh cover. It has a water fountain in the middle and last time i peeked plants were starting to establish. I will defo be finding out a bit more about the pond.. and maybe post the supplier details if I can!

[harasseddad]

We just put our pond in a raised bed. I built a box out of wood I got off freecycle. It's 7ft by 5ft and 32inches high. Filled with earth with the pond in the center. The grandchildren can be lifted up to stand on the edge of the box to look at the pond, but aren't able to climb up themselves to reach it as the sides are smooth (the earth doesn't reach the top so there's only a plank width to grip). As they grow, I can always add another course of planks to keep it too high to climb until I think they're old enough to trust.

[Kate_Izzy]

Here's my pond at the beginning of this year before everything started to grow - most of it is about 1 - 3" deep with the middle of the larger part being about 1' deep

I'm trying to plant round the edge to cover the liner edge and make a corridor for the frogs to move around the garden

Bridge was built from decking offcuts and fenceposts