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A part of the now protected peatland in the Peel, in which the water was dammed to allow for moss growth.

The Raised Bog Underneath the Farm: Walking into the Past and the Present

Reading Time: 8 minutesThroughout the past 150 years, the Peel underwent drastic changes due to drainage projects, turf-cutting, and animal farming. The new materialities these uses produced can make one almost forget that this used to be a peatland. However, Jeroen, an ornithologist, remarked upon the black waters surrounding grassland areas in the Peel. He argued that in these nutrient poor pools, the peatland was “peeking through” the fabric of the present-day landscape. The multiple pasts of the Peel were still present in the landscape’s materialities.

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Hercegovina Kalifornija: Landscape and legacies in the Neretva Valley

Reading Time: 14 minutesThe dream of Herzegovina as California has been around for as long as I remember. It first appeared in Yugoslavia as an industrial and entrepreneurial vision of a landscape that could provide us with everything, provided we were sufficiently entrepreneurial. But it was also an image of a place of rest, where little is needed to enjoy life, in which case industrialisation may be unnecessary.

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Scrub brush in front of mountain and blue sky with clouds.

Thriving in a world of plants: the possibilities of ecobiography

Reading Time: 7 minutesIn 1874 Sarah Brooks, with her mother and brother, walked nearly 700 kilometers out to the land of the Noongar people in the south-eastern extremities of the South-west Australian Floristic Region. It is still unclear how and why Sarah, an educated, accomplished, single woman, spent the last fifty-four years of her life out in this isolated place.