We've just moved into a new house which has a garden pond in the back garden. In order to childproof the garden for our 18 month old daughter we've decided to drain and fill in the pond, which is approx 15 x 5 x 3 ft, has a black liner and concrete slab edging.

Can anyone please advise on how best to drain the pond - whether or not the liner should be cut just beneath the concrete or merely pierced by fork and allowed to drain, and what material to fill the hole in with. We have plenty of large stones in the garden we can use but can we use these along with top soil?

We wish to retain the concrete edge and plan to lay turf over the soil once the pond is filled in.

Any comments / advice would be welcome.

why don't you plant it up as a bog garden

A bog garden would be a good idea. You'd just put a few holes in the liner, fill it with soil and plant bog plants.

Another idea would be to just completely fill it with stones or pebbles and put some kind of fountain in it to make it into like a giant pebble pool. Then you still have a water feature but it is completely safe. and in the future when the children are a bit older you can remove the stones if you want and have a pond again.

the above ideas are good, but not if you ever want to use again as a pond, cos you've stuck a fork through it! same goes for putting large rocks or stones in it if it gets punctured. the water COULD be saved to water established large plants (or as a last resort, the lawn) the next time we have a dry spell (ha ha). otherwise let it out over a few days over the grass or under trees. they never get enough water.