How to root and grow on a muddy ground!
Some reflections from our first peatland restoration camp!
© Anja Matthes
In early May 2025, a group of 35 people arrive at the busy train station of Amsterdam Centraal. We travelled from Greece, Finland, Slovakia, and the Netherlands to join the adventure of exploring and restoring the Dutch peatlands together. On this journey, we will go from having dry feet in the city to putting on our rubber boots and bouncing across the peaty ground. We will visit places that can only be accessed by boat and cylce along dykes steeped in the sounds of wetland birds.
Close to Amsterdam we visit the Westzaan Polder, a Natura 2000 area in the process of restoration. While sitting on a slow boat, that navigates us in between the peaty pieces of land we look out for the many birds that this ecosystem inhabits. The alteration of water and land offers so many niches for a rich wildlife to thrive in:slowly running waters, riparian vegetation,drained parts with sunloving species and wet peaty centers in which we find sundew and peat mosses.
After this start in Amsterdam, we make our way up to the region of Friesland, a flat, vast land cut through by many channels running like veins. When you look around, you can often see sails suddenly appear among fields and bushes, reminding you how close and expansive the waterways are!
The Netherlands have a long cultural and ecological legacy with water in the land. Around 7% of the country is considered peatland, of which 77% is currently drained and used for dairy farming. This drainage causes a range of issues, including land subsidence, increased flood risk, water pollution, habitat loss, and greenhouse gas emissions.
© Anja Matthes
The opposite of drainage
Many of these negative effects are reversed when the peatlands are rewet, meaning that higher water levels stabilise the land, provide flood protection, clean water, offer habitat for meadow birds, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Traditionally, nature restoration has been seen as something that is done in nature reserves and stays untouched by humans. Yet, some of the biggest impacts could happen on farmland. If the Netherlands were to rewet 15% of its agricultural lands, it would save up to 34% of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
Can nature restoration only happen in a nature reserve?
We decided to host part of our restoration camp on a paludiculture site to demonstrate that this binary logic of nature restoration being exclusively done in protected areas is not serving us. Nature restoration can happen anywhere and everywhere; we can bring back nature to our farmlands and to our cities.
During the camp we visit a national park, a dairy farm, a Natura 2000 are and a paludiculture pilot site. We meet nature conservationists, a farmer, paludiculture experts and local volunteers of the bird life organisation. Demonstrating that despite the different circumstances nature conservation can take place in all those landscapes.
Planting of cattail © Anja Matthes
What comes after rewetting?
On the paludiculture site, Jasper van Belle and his colleagues are setting up a test farm with wetland crops on behalf of the regional authority, the Province of Fryslân.
Jasper is keen to understand both how to grow plants effectively in this rewetted landscape, and how to increase the water quality, wildlife, water storage, and carbon storage.
Paludiculture is the productive use of wet or rewetted peatlands, involving the cultivation of wetland-adapted crops under conditions that maintain or even enhance peat formation.
A main character in paludiculture
Cattail (lat.: Typha latifolia) is a tall vascular plant that likes to stand with its feet deep in the wet grounds of peatlands. To enhance its establishment at the rewetted fields many hands are required since there are not many machines yet that can work on such soft and slippery ground. But Jasper is working on solutions: he experiments with pre-seeding and then pumping the water with the seedlings through big hoses across the rewetted land. While this is still in the experimentation phase also small Cattail plants needed to be planted standing knee deep in the mud and also many watering cans with water and sprouts spread.
A piece of the cattail plant © Anja Matthes
The current test farm, started in 2023, aims to scale up the farming from research level to full-scale. While the machinery is being prototyped also the future life of the cattail is being explored. It is an incredibly versatile plant with a fascinating water channel system through its stem, thousands of easy spreading seeds in its characteristic top and even edible shoots!
A great example for its use is as insulation panels in construction, historically and through research its power to replace carbon intensive building materials is shown. But a big step needs to be taken to establish it in the economy!
The vascular system in the stem of cattail © Anja Matthes
And this is where all our hands come in: while not only learning how to treat and care for a recovering peatland, we get insights into the start of cattail production and we lend our hands to enhance the growth of the pilot farm. While walking through the fields of friesland with buckets full of germinating cattail seeds we realise how collective actions can give the necessary push for big transitions.
Since 2 years RE-PEAT has been part of the EU restoration academy project and after joining two amazing camps organised by our partner organisations in Finland and Slovakia we have organised our first camp in the Netherlands!
The planning of the restoration camp itself was a collective effort not only of the RE-PEAT team but the youth advisory board with members from Finland, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Greece together created the program and made this possible.
Taking a break after the restoration work © Anja Matthes
The Restoration Academy is an EU Erasmus project aiming to equip other youth organisations and youth workers with tools for initiating nature restoration activities with young people. By emphasising youth-oriented educational and volunteering activities in nature as a tool to empower and connect young people. The camps organised as part of the program are an opportunity for young people to engage in hands-on restoration, nature-based learning, and youth networking.
