'Why do I like bogs so much? I think it is because I feel very at home with them, I think this has something to do with my queerness and their queer nature as a space.’ - Alys Fowler
The value of peat bogs as a natural resource and haven of biodiversity is undisputed, yet few of us have been lucky enough to experience their beauty and richness.
Sink deep into the dark, black earths of these rugged places and take a close look at the birds, animals, plants and insects that live within them, with award-winning journalist, author, gardener and presenter Alys Fowler as she launches her compelling new book Peatlands.
Blending memoir with environmental insight, she charts her experiences across places like the Border Mire and the Flow Country, uncovering the rich biodiversity and singular character of these wild spaces.
This is a book about connection—to land, to history, and to the delicate balance of nature. As peat continues to be harvested for horticultural use, Fowler urges us to reconsider what we’re sacrificing—and what it truly means to care for such rare, irreplaceable places.
Alys will reflect on the nature of peat, its cultural and environmental significance and the urgent need to change how we value and care for it.
Hosted in The Apple House eco-barn, in an old orchard, guests can explore Tom Stuart-Smith’s Plant Library of over 1500 herbaceous perennials and bulbs ahead of the talk and enjoy a drink (included in the ticket price) while they do so.
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Praise for Peatlands:
'A fascinating, impassioned invitation into the hidden mystery of bogs, at once archive of the deep past and vital living component of our future landscape.' - Olivia Laing
'Peatlands is enchanting. Alys Fowler brings every glinting nuance of bogs-their beauty and necessity-to the foreground and to life in this book. If you've ever looked at a wetland and wanted to know it better, Fowler is an ideal guide: knowledgeable, passionate, and above all, joyous and personable in her prose.' - Jessica J. Lee
'The book throws a sharp light on the plight of bogs - places that come spectacularly to life under Fowler's analytic and passionate gaze. A delight to read but also a sobering education.'
- Tom Stuart-Smith
About Alys Fowler
Alys Fowler is a gardener, presenter and an award-winning journalist who has written for the weekend Guardian about gardening and the environment. She has written eleven books, including Hidden Nature, which was shortlisted for the Wainwright prize in 2018, and her first work of fiction, The Woman Who Buried Herself, published in 2021 by Hazel Press. Her writing has also been anthologised in the new nature writing anthology, Gifts of Gravity and Light, also published in 2021. Her broadcast work has spanned everything from presenting on television on the BBC’s Gardeners World, The Edible Garden, The Great British Garden and Our Food, she has contributed to numerous radio programmes and online platforms.
She trained in horticulture at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the New York Botanical Gardens and it is through her love of plants and ecology that she came to writing.
She has taught creative nonfiction at Birmingham City University. She has lectured at Tate Britain and the Royal Academy and has held workshops on everything from writing about water, to how to identify plants. Her new book Peatlands is published 29 May 2025.