Green Credentials
Crafting a lasting heritage
For over 80 years, three generations of the Peake family have embraced farming life in the beautiful Dedham Vale. As custodians of these incredible landscapes, our passion for conservation and the environment fuels our commitment to being a sustainable green enterprise. We’re in it for the long haul!
The Boxford Group
A family affair
Stoke by Nayland Resort, along with sister companies Boxford Suffolk Farms and Peake Fruit, forms The Boxford Group. With a 600-strong team, we are incredibly proud of our numerous awards celebrating our dedication to green initiatives.
Renewable and sustainable energy
The perfect circular economy
We've invested over £5 million in renewable energy over the years, including solar panels, heat pumps, biomass boilers and an anaerobic digester (AD) plant.
The AD plant ferments local resources and fruit by-products to produce green electricity and heat to power the Resort - we even produce enough energy to sell some back to the grid! This lowers costs and reduces our carbon footprint, benefitting the community and promoting a circular economy.
Eco champions for decades
Driving positive change
With 60,000 trees planted around our championship courses, and our award-winning sustainable practices in fruit-growing, we've been climate change warriors for over 80 years. Join us on our journey of environmental stewardship and responsible business. Together we can make a change.
Our sustainability efforts - the lowdown
Greenkeeping
We’re committed to fostering sustainable golf practices to secure long-term ecological success. Our initiatives so far include:
- Planting 60,000 trees in 40 years
- Proactive woodland management
- Stacking fallen trees for wildlife
- Managing hedges for bird-nesting
- On-site composting of grass and leaves
- Integrated pest management with minimal chemical damage to the environment
- Regular ecological assessments with English Nature, Sports Turf Research Institute (STRI), and the English Golf Union (EGU)
- Collaborating with various entities to ensure best practices are maintained
- Registering and securely storing hazardous materials
- Recycling rainwater from our buildings to irrigate our golf courses and orchards
- Implementing a sophisticated water resource management system
Energy and waste management
We’ve implemented efficient energy and waste management systems to create a greener and more eco-friendly environment, including:
- Using local providers for produce and supplies
- 60% of hotel lighting uses low-energy lamps
- Bedroom heating and lighting activates with key cards
- Public areas use movement detector sensors for lighting
- We’ve installed time-operated heating systems
- Guests are encouraged to reuse towels and linens
- Inverter-driven heating systems are installed
- We have water savers in all flushing toilets
- Fluorescent lamps are disposed of appropriately
- Oil and chemical catchment tank fitted in storm drain
- Thermal covers on the swimming pool and spa to prevent heat loss
- Reclaimed heat from the pool warms air
- Low chemical usage in the pool
- Recycling kitchen oil
- Recycling bottles
- Reusing envelopes and paper for internal comms
- Promoting email usage to save paper
- Recycling empty ink cartridges and toners
Organic fertiliser
Heat by-product from the AD plant is used to dry woodchip for biomass boilers to heat our soft fruit glasshouses, and the digestate from the AD plant is industrially dried on-site to provide rich organic fertiliser for our golf courses and orchards.
Rainwater harvesting
We harvest millions of litres of rainwater from our soft fruit glasshouses and feed it back into our reservoirs to be recycled as irrigation water for our fruit and golf courses – a perfect circular economy.
Green awards
Our innovative, sustainable techniques used in our fruit growing have resulted in awards for Best Top Fruit Grower, and Best Soft Fruit Grower of the year awards (2015 and 2019).
In 2019, we won an international AD and Biogas Award, competing with companies in London and abroad. We have also won a Sustainable Tourism award for our Hotel, Golf and Spa resort and one for Best Green Farming Enterprise. We are proud to be an “Anglian Business Green 100" company.