ACE Bogs exhibition goes digital
In April 2025, Yorkshire Peat Partnership held an exhibition in Ilkley to celebrate its ACE Bogs project, a unique collaboration between practitioners, landowner, artists and community to help people in West and North Yorkshire get closer to the region’s peatlands – closer in the physical sense but also closer in understanding. If you were unable to get to the physical exhibition, you can see highlights on YPP’s exhibition page, which includes links to pages for each of the artists – Naseem Darbey, Juliet Klottrup and Sarah Smout – and the four films created to support the exhibition.
New sphagnum inoculation research
As the climate warms, it's important to understand whether current methods used to restore peatlands are effective in the long term. One key method is to speed up revegetation by inoculating greenhouse-grown Sphagnum moss to bare peat, along with increasing the water table level in the landscape. While some Sphagnum mosses are known to be natural colonisers, we still don’t have much data on how successful greenhouse-grown mosses are when used in the wild. Yorkshire Peat Partnership has been studying how greenhouse-grown Sphagnum moss grows over time on upland peatland soil in the Nidderdale National Landscape. Even though more research is needed, the current method of adding Sphagnum to damaged peat seems to work well for quick regrowth (less than a year). The Yorkshire Mix works well in heather-dominated peatlands, but could be improved for areas with cotton grass, to get even better results. Future work could focus on testing different moss combinations to create custom mixes for different habitats. The full report is available online.
New training course from YPP – monitoring peatlands
Yorkshire Peat Partnership has a new course to expand capacity in monitoring peatland restoration. This one-day course is delivered in a classroom setting, with engaging presentations enhanced by discussion of real-world case studies. Monitoring Peatlands is highly recommended as CPD for peatland restoration practitioners, as well as those managing, monitoring and studying peatlands. Join YPP's expert practitioners to learn how to:
- Design future-proof peatland monitoring for robust data collection.
- Harness the potential of UAVs for remote monitoring.
- Engage stakeholders with impactful communication.
There are currently two course dates for 2025 – 25th July and 29th August (see individual date links for booking and full course details).
Digging in the Dirt: Adventures in Ecopoetry
MK Lit Fest have partnered with Poets for the Planet to present this unique event, where four of the UK's most exhilarating practising poets - Clare Shaw, Caleb Parkin, Rishi Dastidar and Jessica Mookherjee - will each present an online masterclass that demonstrates their relationship to location and place, and how this is reflected in their poetry and their writing process and practices. All profits will be donated to Yorkshire Peat Partnership. Find out more.
