I live in St. Louis, Missouri, and I am just starting to garden/steward a vacant lot leased from the
city. I'm building hugelculture-ish raised beds on contour (with
compost dumped at site for free from the city) where i'll be growing mostly sweet potatoes and winter squash. I'll be learning the
art of vegetative propagation of perennials (autumn olive, peaches,
black locust) to populate the slope leading down to the alley. and i want to play with learning how to make a natural pond- a small one, with just a shovel, and gleying it instead of using plastic or pigs (i'd use pigs if i had 'em). I want to have a
pond for the practice of making one, to provide habitat for frogs, to maybe grow some azolla, and to just make the site wetter in general to cut down on the need to irrigate those raised beds.
but being in the city, on a lot without any fencing, i am supposed to worry about the possibility that little children might drown in something like a
pond. i've learned it's a concept in law and insurance called attractive nuisance.
so my first thought is to put a
fence around the pond, but something else to keep in mind is that this lot is in a pretty nice middle
class neighborhood where the neighbors care about "eyesores". and while i personally don't think most things that people think of as eyesores are ugly, i do think it is less than elegant to have a
fence around a pond.
i could fence the whole property but as this lease with the city is such that they can take it from me anytime with 30 days notice, I don't want to invest much money at all. I just want to play with the site on the cheap and learn what I can.
my next thought is to plant brambles around the pond, but i'm not sure how brambles would do with so much
water or if that could be sufficient measures to keep kids out. or perhaps having thorny fruit bearing plants surrounding a pond is only stacking the attractive nuisances!
i hate that this culture is so controlled by fear of liability. it is the source of so much of the mediocrity and shittyness of our current situation. in a more ideal world, where my life was more integrated, the problem would be non-existent because people (including me) would always be somewhere nearby the pond and that attention would prevent any tragedies from happening. (this lot is next to my parents' house, so I will personally be around only a couple times a week, and my parents don't spend much time outside. the neighbors across the alley (with their backyards in full view running the length of this lot) do spend a lot of time outside. perhaps they can be recruited for the cause.)
so if anyone has any thoughts about a
permaculture solution to the drowning child sector in my pond design I'm very open to hearing them. thank you!
(I posted this here because it is maybe an issue related to
city repair (how to enact
permaculture in populated areas. but perhaps its more a homesteading forum issue? or
permaculture?)
