When visiting, please keep your dog on a lead

If you walk your dog on the Mosses, please help to protect the nesting birds by keeping your dog on a lead.

Use peat-free garden compost

Switching to peat-free compost will help to fight climate change – and won’t have a negative impact on the beauty of British gardens. British gardeners use several million cubic metres of peat in garden compost and growbags every year.

Why will going peat-free help?
Peatland is a precious resource, created by Sphagnum moss over thousands of years. It is one of the rarest habitats on earth, covering just 3% of the earth’s surface. Peatland is a massive carbon store, holding, acre for acre, more carbon than woodland. However, when it is dug up and allowed to dry out, as it is when it’s added to garden compost, the carbon that’s been stored in the peat for thousands of years is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, adding to climate change.

In peatbogs – like the Marches Mosses, which covers 2,500 acres in Shropshire and Wales, new peat is formed very slowly, at only 1mm per year. It’s estimated that removing peat to use in garden compost strips 500 years’ worth of peat formation every year.

The government has a goal of eliminating peat use by amateur gardeners by the end of 2020 to help to fight climate change.

What are the alternatives?
Alternatives to peat in garden compost include bark, green compost, wood waste, wood fibre and coir. You can find more information from the Royal Horticultural Society website: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=441.

Peatlands store water

Peatlands store water, helping to prevent flooding in nearby areas. Sphagnum moss, the keystone in peat creation, can store 20 times its weight in water.

Peat stores more carbon than forests

Global peatlands contain at least 550 gigatons of carbon, more than twice the amount of carbon stored in all of the earth’s forests.

Peat stores carbon

Healthy peat stores carbon. Peatlands cover just 3% of the earth’s surface but hold nearly 30% of all soil carbon.

Water Vole

The water vole declined by 90% in the 1970s in England, but is still found in many parts of the Meres and Mosses.

The Story of the Peat on the Marches Mosses

In the United Kingdom, approximately 8% of our land is mad up of peat. This is a globally rare environment and we have a comparatively large amount of it.

Peat is 90% water and plays an important role in protection against flooding, water quality and carbon storage. Peatlands in the UK store approximately 5.5 billion tonnes of carbon. This is 36 times more than all of our woodlands store.

There are several types of peatlands; across the Meres and Mosses you can find these:

Lowland raised bogs, which are fed only by rainfall.  They are acidic and low in nutrients.  The Marches Mosses are the third-largest lowland raised bog in the UK.

Mires, which may contain some peat-forming vegetation but are fed only by rainfall.

Fens, which acquire minerals not just from rainfall but also from mineral-rich groundwater that flows through soil and rocks.

Peat forms where a number of conditions exist simultaneously over a long period of time. These conditions are:

• The continuous annual growth of vegetation
• Moderate to high levels of rainfall
• Poor drainage leading to water logging of the land
• Low levels of oxygen in the soil

It takes about 100 years to make a peat moss 5 cm deep.  Plant residues decompose and are compacted as they build up, limiting peat building to 0.5mm – 1mm per year.

In the Meres and Mosses landscape, peat formed after the last ice age when the glacial retreat left an undulating landscape with many hollows that filled with water, creating the meres (lakes). Over time some of these lakes began to fill in with vegetation. Their remains began to form fen-peat, which in turn allowed Sphagnum moss, the key plant in peat formation to begin to colonise.

Throughout history peat has had a long list of uses:

• As a domestic and commercial fuel as far back as the 7th century.
• As bedding for livestock
• Peat fires used to dry out malted barley for distilling whiskey
• To mop up oil spills
• As a filter for gases, odours and liquids
• As a building material
• As a packing material for transporting fruit and vegetables
• To make textiles and even Christmas wreaths
• To add to garden compost

The Marches Mosses are now a National Nature Reserve protected site which has been regenerated by a group led by Natural England with a grant from the BogLIFE programme, in partnership with Natural Resources Wales and Shropshire Wildlife Trust and supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Meres and Mosses Landscape

The Meres and Mosses landscape was formed by retreating glaciers 12,000 years ago. Now, lowland raised peat bogs are one of the most endangered habitats on Earth.