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🦢 Context! 🦢

Growing up, my Mum loved gardening. It was her passion in life. Consequently, I’ve been to a lot of garden centres.

One thing I’ve always appreciated about garden centres – and Britain has a lot of them – is that each one has to have its own gimmick. Exotic animals for sale! Hedge mazes! Miniature train rides! They have to stand out just to stay in business – and Reg Taylor’s Garden Centre, just outside of the town of Southwell in Nottinghamshire, has something really unique. A specialised nature sanctuary for one of the world’s prettiest yet antisocial birds, the swan.

But why swans? Well, the garden centre’s website suggests that the founder’s wife had a fondness for the birds, and that the sanctuary opened in the 1980s as a place to look after injured swans. It’s been going since then, amassing a decent collection of waterfowl and other birds that are pretty to look at. But that’s all I could find. I probably should have asked the staff about the sanctuary’s history, sorry!

Anyway my friends and I were in the Christmas spirit, so after visiting the little town of Southwell (it’s cute but there’s not much to do tbh), I suggested we pay a visit to the Southwell Swan Sanctuary. And to my surprise they actually went along with it.

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🦢What it’s Like 🦢

We wandered in and found that, to actually get into the swan sanctuary, we needed to find the main counter of the garden centre and pay an entry fee. For £3 we each got a little sticker saying we paid. Adorably the entire thing basically runs on honesty – there’s no real gate or anything, you could probably just go see the swans without paying. But we’re good people.

Walking down to the bottom of the garden centre, cut off by some hedges and a cute gazebo, is the sanctuary itself. On the way we came across this rather ominous sign about swans.

We pass through the little wendy house that serves as a gate to the sanctuary, and we are immediately swarmed.

For a mere £1 extra, I had purchased a bag of birdseed to merrily distribute to the birds while we explored the sanctuary. I’d hoped to scatter the seeds around as we walked, but the waterfowl smelled blood and immediately surrounded us. Their quacks and squawks immediately ruined the peace and quiet but we enjoyed the attention they gave us.

One thing that immediately took us by surprise was the presence of several peacocks. Native to India, peacocks were imported en masse in centuries past. Left to their own devices, the birds were free to wander around the gardens of stately homes, screech at ungodly hours, shit everywhere and get eaten by unscrupulous foxes. But they look beautiful while doing it so peacocks have become a staple of the British countryside.

We try to satisfy our adoring fans but they are insatiable, so we press onwards. The sanctuary isn’t too big, and as it’s the dead of winter we have the place mostly to ourselves. This has the knock-on effect of making us the only food source the birds have at that point in time, so we’re quietly stalked by an entourage of birds for our entire visit.

But onto the sanctuary itself. It’s basically a park, made up of a handful of little lakes, with some sculptures to ponder and some places to sit down, if you’d like to take in the serene atmosphere of the place. It’s incredibly calming. The winter mist, quiet rural setting and silent grace of the swans gliding on the water is really quite touching.

We quickly noticed that the sculptures themselves are a bit odd. There’s not one but two red phone booths (neither works, we tried). There’s a collection of safari wildlife made up of scrap metal. Imitation Roman statues. Giant apples. I really enjoyed the bizarre nature of it all – it makes the sanctuary feel almost dreamlike.

Another thing we noticed was a lack of… swans. There’s a few, but for a place named a swan sanctuary we expected some different types – maybe even some exotic ones! According to the RSPB we have three types of swan in the UK – it’s odd that a swan sanctuary only has one.

They do have a lot of other birds though. We met geese who couldn’t respect personal space, adorable white ducks who melted our hearts. Strangely aggressive mallards who kept bullying other ducks. Peacocks – who were still stalking us – that eventually got confident enough to eat out of our hands! We didn’t do this much though. Their pointy beaks were too sharp.

Inexplicably there was also a singular chicken. There was no explanation why he was there, but we instantly grew attached to him 🥰

And that’s how our visit went, really. It’s not a comex place. We had a lovely time exploring the lakes, bumping into random pieces of art and befriending entirely new birds. Following the path in a loop, we weren’t there longer than 45 minutes.

Having spent enough time to make the £3 entry fee worth it, and taking 100000 photos for Instagram, we left after dumping the remainder of our seed for the singular chicken, our new best friend, to eat without interruption. Unfortunately he had about five seconds before he was pushed out by some really mean peacocks! I felt bad for him but he didn’t seem too aggrieved. It’s just another day for him.

Charmed by our brief visit to a secret garden filled with birds, we adjourned and headed to the nearest Tim Hortons for hot chocolate and donuts.

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🦢 Final Thoughts 🦢

The best thing about running a blog as a creative exercise, rather than a source of income, is that you can write about literally anything. Even a little post about a swan sanctuary! And I really, really liked this place.

I’d recommend Southwell Swan Sanctuary for people with a soft spot for wildlife and tranquility. As a unique place to relax, to de-stress, to take your mind off things for a bit and just feed some birds, this place is just perf 👌🏻

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🦢 Useful Info 🦢

• The sanctuary itself doesn’t have any facilities, but the main garden centre has toilets, a café etc. No gender neutral toilets sadly.
• We visited in winter and it got quite muddy in places. Bring decent footwear.
• It’s worth paying the extra £1 for a bag of birdseed! One bag lasted the three of us the entire walk round.
• Most of the birds seemed to be wild so you might get different ones depending on the time of year you visit. I assume there’s more birds to feed in the summer, when they migrate to the UK.
• The Southwell Swan Sanctuary doesn’t have its own entry on online maps!! Search for “Reg Taylor’s Garden Centre” if you’re looking for directions.

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