Polders are a product of a combination of the Confucian well field system and the hydrological environment of the Yunmeng Marsh area. Polders represent a unique form of farmland development created by people through long-term land management, including water control and harnessing paddy fields. However, there are several coexisting advantages and disadvantages of this mode of land use, so how to utilise the ecological wisdom from traditional paddy field use is a problem that must be solved urgently, so it can continue to play a role into the future. This study takes the polder restoration area in Zhuhu Wetland Park in Hubei Province as its research subject. In this study, a multifunctional polder system was designed based on ecological principles, with ecological, economic, cultural and social development benefits in addition to conserving water for flood prevention. Through fully evaluating the ecological wisdom of the polder system, a complex symbiotic "lake-polder" ecosystem in the ancient Yunmeng Marsh area was proposed, including the micro-wetland model, the land and water interface ecological regulation model, the flexible design model and the river-wetland complex model. These models were beneficial to the realization of comprehensive ecological services, such as flood control, water purification, landscape optimization and biological habitat provision, and promotion of the co-existence between the cultural heritage and ecological environment of the polder landscape, thus realizing the ecological model of intelligent polder in the Yunmeng Marsh area. This study represents a new exploration of the ecological structure of the polder system, providing an engineering demonstration and a reference for the landscape protection and ecological model design of polders in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.