The landscape around the city of Saint Petersburg has been shaped deeply by decades of industrial peat mining. Since the end of extraction in the 1980s, many former excavation sites have experienced a return of water, plants, and wildlife. While for some these changes seem to prove nature's ability to recover from human use, people whose professional and private lives were connected to the peat industry see them as signs of decline. This article looks at the different layers of meaning and time in a former Russian peat mining region, pointing to the ambiguity of peatlands after the end of their industrial use and the environmental legacy of peat extraction.