Potting soil is not innocent: peat swamps in the Baltic states and Scandinavia are being lost due to peat excavations for soil for our plants. Destruction and drainage of peatlands is responsible for almost 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s allowed again: going into the garden and with your hands in the potting soil. But don’t do the latter. Because if you think you are being sustainable by making the garden green with potting soil and plants grown in peat, you are destroying nature reserves in the Baltic states.
While we in the Netherlands spend millions on restoring peat areas such as the Fochteloërveen, we use massively imported peat (in other words: dried peat) from excavated foreign peat areas. Although peatlands cover only 3 percent of the Earth’s surface, they store a third of the world’s carbon – almost twice as much as all the forests in the world. Damaged peatlands are a concern annually for almost 6 percent of global human CO2 emissions .
Ninabel nursery is the odd one out
As a grower in Boerakker, Marijke Akerboom (60) is one of the few who grows plants without using peat. “I started as a grower in 2015 and immediately decided not to use peat.” That is why she mixes leaf compost with coarse sand for her nursery Ninabel and uses it for the 300 plant species that she sells.
Four women help her on a voluntary basis. Because Akerboom is not very commercially minded: she mainly wants to work on reintroducing native species into Dutch gardens. This is important for many insects such as wild bees, which are having a hard time. And these volunteers really support that. One of them is Sam Jongedijk (53) from Roden: “I think it is very important to contribute to something that is good for the world.”
Consciously not using peat is also part of this. “Nature areas are excavated for this purpose. You will never get that back,” says Akerboom, as she fills a wheelbarrow with leaf compost.
Cons
She is not completely happy with this solution either. “This has major disadvantages. After a year the soil will compact and you will not get enough air for the roots. And it’s really hard: you’re setting yourself up for an accident.” Peat is a useful product because it provides air in the soil and can retain a lot of moisture. There are no really good alternatives yet.
For example, you can incorporate coconut fibers into leaf compost. Disadvantage: coconut also has to come from far away. Replacing peat with elephant grass and cattail is possible, but these remove nutrition from the plant. The Wilde Weelde trade association for ecological growers and gardeners is busy experimenting, for example with wool pellets. Akerboom will wait patiently. “Oh, this will work too.”
In the meantime, she gives consumers a tip: peat is sometimes very useful for nurseries, but for plants in your own garden that is complete nonsense. “You don’t need it at all.” You can simply work with leaf soil or compost.
Foundation against peat
Karin Bodewits (40) also thinks so. Eliminating peat is her life’s goal. She founded with her partner Philipp Gramlich the Turfvrij foundation on. She now lives in Oostbeek (near Arnhem), but grew up in Noordbroek in Groningen. For many years she lived abroad, such as Germany and Great Britain. “Pet use is a much bigger issue there,” notes Bodewits.
Alternatives are already being used much more in Great Britain, peat has been banned there for private individuals since this year. Switzerland is doing the best: the peat content in bags of potting soil for private individuals is only 4 percent. This is in the Netherlands according to the Potgrond Nederland Association 60 percent peat in the professional sector and 52 percent in bags of potting soil. “But when I look at bags of potting soil in the store, that doesn’t seem right. That share is often higher.”
In the Netherlands it was a year ago an official covenant signed to reduce peat use from 2025. “But here you never hear anything about peat, even though we use relatively much. The Dutch horticultural sector is enormous.”
“I am very concerned about the climate,” Bodewits explains. “I am an activist, but I am not someone who likes to stick to the streets. But I actually think that stopping peat is such low-hanging fruit, shouldn’t it be possible to arrange that?”
In its campaign against peat, Bodewits focuses on both the horticultural sector and the consumer. Because there are plenty of alternatives to potting soil for the latter group on websites such as Bio-Kultura and Ecotuintje . “It starts with consciousness. Don’t buy violets from Praxis or Lidl. Just like the basil plants at Albert Heijn. These are not companies that are suitable for selling plants. They hardly water their plants and therefore prefer plants on peat, because it retains water for longer.”
Excavated from dewatered areas
According to the peat sector, peat is not that bad at all, because the material is only excavated from dewatered areas with no natural value. The peat no longer stores carbon there. A recent article by German investigative journalists of the South German Zeitung shows, however, that peat bogs in Estonia are still being drained for peat extraction.
Moreover, Bodewits emphasizes, peat extraction from drained areas is also unwise. Peat is a fossil material that oxidizes when it is not submerged in water. This releases carbon into the atmosphere. It is better to re-wet peat areas, which may allow the raised peat to become active again and capture carbon.
Wet peatlands are also sponges and can retain a lot of water, something useful in times of climate change. A third argument for never digging is that this causes soil subsidence. Partly thanks to peat extraction, many areas in the Netherlands are also below sea level.
‘Downright hypocritical’
For the above reasons, Mans Schepers, assistant professor at the Landscape Knowledge Center at the University of Groningen, is also against peat use. “I find it very surprising that we are not so keen on it in the Netherlands, while – especially in the Northern Netherlands – we have an enormous history with peat.”
It is not without reason that we stopped peat excavations in the past, says Schepers. Land subsidence and CO2 emissions were reasons for this. And we are still making policy on this: due to high CO2 emissions due to oxidation, the water level in the Frisian peat meadow areas has risen. “It is downright hypocritical that we still import so much peat from other countries.”
“Perhaps we have traditionally become too accustomed to the fact that peat is not useful in the soil. But on a global level it is a lot more useful there than in my flower box.”