• February 18, 2026

Multi Peat visits the Grote Beek Valley

From 6 to 8 May 2025, the Multi Peat partnership met in Belgium. In addition to many productive discussions about the status and progress of the project, we also visited the site to see the nature restoration work in the Grote Beek Valley.

A lot has already been done in the Valley to stabilise the water level and thus preserve the peat layer. We had a very long day ahead of us with many different locations to visit. We visited a sub-area that had been reopened, where some ditches had already been filled in, a number of ponds had been restored and where a lot of restoration work was still planned. In addition to this reopened area, we also visited one of the many swamp forests and, together with all the partners, filled in a small ditch.

After that, we visited a number of places outside the project area. We also went to a recently restored area in the Valley of the Zwarte Beek as part of Interreg Care-Peat. This showed very nicely what we can expect within five years as a result of the restoration work in the Grote Beek.

And, of course, we also visited the paludiculture pilot site, the Strackxhoeve, where we joined farmer Brent to look at willow cultivation.

This also demonstrates that a great deal has already been achieved thanks to the LIFE Multi Peat project. The results are impressive and show that large-scale nature restoration is possible, even in the highly fragmented landscape of Flanders.