Peat bogs are a remarkable way to protect against floods. They are cheap, natural and long-lasting, but there's hardly been mention of them in all the furore over how to improve the nation's flood defences. That's probably because bogs are not glamorous – but they are remarkable at soaking up water like a sponge, something like 20 times their own weight in water, capturing torrential downpours of rain and then slowly draining the water away instead of flooding rivers and surrounding land.
The sponginess of bogs comes from the living moss, decaying plants and peat. And this also makes a fascinating habitat for specialised plants, such as sundew, butterwort and bladderwort, carnivorous plants which feed on small creatures to make up for the poor nutrition from the acid soil of the bogs.
Bogs also help fight climate change. The plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and after they die their remains are preserved as peat in the acid waters of the bog, locking away the carbon. Over thousands of years that peat builds up into a vast store of carbon – Britain's bogs store some 5.5 billion tonnes of carbon, more than 35 times that in our forests.
Britain is blessed with some of the world's finest bogs, from Dartmoor to the Outer Hebrides. But many of our boglands have been destroyed for plant compost, farmland or forestry. They need to be restored by blocking up drainage ditches and letting them fill up with water once more.