Abstract As an extension of the modelling on environmental dispersion in a single zone wetland [Zeng, L., Chen, G.Q., 2009. Ecological degradation and hydraulic dispersion of contaminant in wetland. Ecol. Model., 222, 293–300], the typical case of a pulsed contaminant emission into a steady flow through a distinctively vegetated two-zone shallow wetland channel is analytically explored in this paper in terms of the longitudinal evolution of the lateral mean concentration under environmental dispersion. The velocity profile of a fully developed flow through the wetland is derived, with that for a single zone wetland flow included as a special case. Taylor’s classical analysis and Aris’s method of concentration moments for solute dispersion in a single phase fluid flow are rigorously generalized for the two-zone case of a wetland flow to develop the dispersion model and to determine the dispersivity, which is illustrated with an asymptotic time variation characterized by stem dominated, transitional, and width-stem dominated stages. For typical contaminant constituents of chemical oxygen demand, biochemical oxygen demand, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and heavy metal, the evolution of contaminant cloud is illustrated with the critical length and duration of the contaminant cloud with constituent concentration beyond some given environmental standard level.