Freshwater wetlands are widely recognized for their importance in water and carbon (C) cycling, making restoration of degraded wetlands a major goal in many Coastal Plain regions impacted by intensive agriculture. We studied restored, natural, and degraded (agricultural) wetlands on Maryland’s Delmarva Peninsula to understand their roles in water and C transport, soil C storage, and the potential for restoration to reduce C emissions. We show that wetland restoration could increase landscape water storage potential by 80% and increase connectivity to perennial waters; however, soil C storage is extremely variable and not necessarily higher in restored sites than those undisturbed. To understand this variability, we focused on C emissions and the possible influence of plants and hydrology. We show that methane (CH4) emissions were disproportionately higher from plant patches characterized by certain plant types and that these emissions scaled over space and time across a wetland. We also found that over time, restored wetland emissions converged to those of natural wetlands. Hydrology acted like an ‘on-off’ switch in which non-inundated regions of wetlands emitted minimal CH4 (0.07 ± 0.4 mmol m−2 d−1) compared to inundated regions (as much as 3 mmol m−2 d−1). Wetlands still in agriculture had the lowest areal emissions regardless of water level; however, harvesting and processing of crops likely results in significant C losses to the atmosphere