X Log In Home Our Carriages   Luggage Van   Millpool   TPO   Mevy   Harvey Prices+Booking Explore   St Germans   Hayle   Cornwall Environmental   Transport   Carbon Offset   Daytrips   Gardens   Woods   Blog Children Pets About   Contact   Legal Stuff   Accessibility   Awards   Media   FAQ's   News Links


HOME  |  CARRIAGES  |  PRICES      

Carbon Offsetting

If you arrive by train, bus, bike, sailing boat or on foot (all of these are possible, both St Germans and Hayle are well connected) we will knock £50 off your holiday! In the spirit of reduced holiday miles, we also offer the same discount for anyone with a Devon or Cornwall postcode.

However we understand arriving by public transport is not possible for everyone, so if we can't tempt you away from your car (or you are doubly green) we also offer the option to offset your holiday carbon use. For £25 we will plant a tree for you, or a number of tree saplings, or create and maintain three metres of wildlife hedge.If you would like a particular sort of tree, then please let us know.

We pledge that all trees are planted in addition to our normal planting programme. We have also pledged as a business to develop our natural environment year on year to ensure our land is rewarding to nature for many years to come. From 2021 we made the decision to match fund any tree donations, and these additional funds will be spent on general tree and hedge planting schemes, as well as allowing us to give a meaningful donation to community orchards.

Thank you tree champions! Your donations have paid for lots of fantastic community planting schemes, as well as the trees we have planted around our four sites; the carriage gardens at St Germans and Hayle, our woodland, and our family orchard, Pommania. You can read more about our tree planting locations by skipping to the bottom of the page.

While we know that planting trees abroad may offer better value for money, we prefer the control we maintain when dealing with local communities directly or planting on our own land.

In 2018 and 2019 we planted a community orchard in St Germans as part of the rejuvenation of the recreation ground (The Rec). This has been under-sown with wildflower seeds and provides valuable nectar for pollinators, food for birds and villagers and pleasure for all.

In the autumn of 2021 we pledged money for 38 mixed fruit trees for a community tree planting scheme at Moor Barton on Dartmoor.

In 2023 we funded 25 olive trees and 25 alders for Loveland Community Growers in Penryn.

In the spring of 2025 we donated to Helston Community Climate Action to pay for trees for their community orchard and nuttery.

If you know of a community scheme that would benefit from a donation of trees, do please contact us. We are particularly keen to plant orchards or woodlands that will provide benefit for local people.

As part of our endeavour to grow the environment we have planted hedge whips and self sown apple trees along the border of our sites, and this is an ongoing process. In 2021 we also planted over 250 mixed hawthorn and wildlife hedging whips at Pommania, 100 oak trees and a mixture of Rowan, Service Trees, Sweet Chestnut, Walnut, Beech and Silver Birch at Colgear Woods, to make for a greater broadleaf mix. In the spring of 2022 we continued our planting with a further 140 trees including wildlife friendly species of oak, birch, lime, maple, dogwood and rowan and twenty eucalyptus chosen for their carbon sequestration qualities. We also planted a small orchard of twelve apple and pear trees in memory of our friend Dean. 2023 saw a further eighty mixed trees and shrubs, including spindle, dogwood, hornbeam, walnut, apple and oak, planted in our woods.

In 2024 we planted more trees in Dean's orchard in memory of his brother, Finn. We also planted three fruiting almond trees and began creating an edible forest in a fallow field at Pommania. Further fruit trees were also planted in a clearing in the woods, and around the site at St Germans.

In 2025 we were delighted to be able to offer a grant to Helston Climate Action Group to establish a fruit and nut orchard on land around the scout hut in Helston. We also planted nine more fruiting cherries and one large flowering cherry at Pommania. Our regular sprinkling of acorns around the woods is also bearing fruit, with many oaks seeding in small clearings created as a result of clearing larch.

This page is usually updated annually. If you have donated a tree but are not yet listed, please check again in a year’s time or contact us on office@railholiday.co.uk. This page was last updated in March 2025.

Thank you to our Railholiday Tree Champions



Our planting sites

Our gardens
We have a series of gardens in St Germans, with a footprint of about an acre, and a further half an acre of garden at our carriage in Hayle. Read here to find out how they are gardened for optimum wildlife benefit.

Our woods
We have ten acres of woodland that supply our carriages with recreation and wood for heating. We have worked hard to make sure there is plenty of interest for guests and wildlife alike. You can read more about our woodland on our dedicated woods page.

Pommania
We have access to thirty-eight acres of orchards, nuts, coppice and fields along the river Lynher between Landrake and Coombe, at Lizzy’s family small-holiday, a self-declared autonomous republic called Pommania.

We have donated trees to Moor Barton. This is a rewilding project rewilding land and people for ecological restoration, thriving wildlife and healthy diverse communities.

We have also donated trees to Loveland. Loveland is one of the three arms of the Falmouth Food Coop. It is a community field in Penryn with the aims of developing community resilience and strength through growing food, coming together and supporting biodiversity. The field has a variety of elements, a community garden, market garden, medicinal herb garden, orchard, heritage grains experiment and more. They hold feasts in summer open to the community using food grown on the land. The activities of the field are overseen by a volunteer steering group, and the work done on the field is primarily done by the one-hundred and fifty plus volunteers that visit the site throughout the year and at the bi-weekly volunteer sessions.

We have donated trees to Helston Climate Action Group for a community orchard and nuttery.

We offer each of our recipients grants of up to £500 for their planting schemes, which is partly funded by tree champions, and partly by Railholiday funds.

Back to TOP

Contact Railholiday by email at office@railholiday.co.uk or by phone on (+44) 01503 230783.  ©