Swains Farm Shop and Garden Centre

Absolutely fantastic Sunday drive into the countryside bees a buzzing aaah
We love it here you can feed the donkeys carrotts (a few free) are provided by farm shop for the Little ones, fab place great range of food plants
Just one thing missing: please can we have a café? I can run it for you

Thanks swains farm
Sue x

i totally agree with mike i take my kids here all the time its great

Let’s get nostalgic:
When I was knee high to a bee the idea of seeing countryside, animals and plants was just a little bit exciting and places like Swains Farm Shop remind me of just how exciting. It’s a petting zoo cum deli cum garden centre that provides Sunday fun for families from all over Sussex. Donkeys, Goats, Pigs and Hens will keep the kids happy while the massive selection of seeds and farm goods will cause the eyes of foodies to grow and the green-​fingers of gardeners to get all twitchy. All farm shops are equal but some farm shops are more equal than others. Swains is more equal than most.

Swains Farm Shop is yet another fabulous rampage into childhood for me. I pulled up in the car park and leapt from the car, completely ignoring the fantastically well stocked shop, transfixed engrossed and totally ready to be at one with the animals. As if by some miracle they seemed to have a similar plan. I felt like a veritable St Francis of Assisi as I discussed the finer points of not pecking my hand with a huge and beautifully healthy cockerel. All the animals here seem to be so friendly that they give the impression that at any given moment they will indeed begin to talk and as for their condition and living arrangements, it’s as though they might be found on some zoological edition of MTV’s «Cribs».
Stepping into the shop I found the usual display of mouth watering homemade walnut cakes, a selection of glass bottled fresh juices and all the usual organically produced vegetables and cheese. Something immediately struck me as odd though; they were all priced at little more than you would expect to pay in the supermarket, ergo, Swain’s are the real deal. Having spent a little while in the farm shop area basking in the radiant loveliness of it all I moved through to the garden section.
The garden section is big for a place of this size ant there’s no arguing that the seed section is intense by its’ sheer magnitude. But as a result of the location of this place there did seem to be rather a lot of the old Home Counties garden ornaments on display like tacky urn based water features and needlessly expensive patio table sets. Once you get past this section though Swains immediately vindicates itself with a selection of trees plants and fish that take your mind away from the farm shop and into garden centre mode.
If I were to cut to the quick I would have to say that this place elegantly combines three experiences; a petting zoo, a genuinely great farm shop and a garden centre in which anyone with even the littlest garden space could spent a merry hour or two.

Swains is a fantastic place to go for fresh, locally reared produce. Its a huge site that also includes a really impressive garden center too.
We buy all our meat and veg from here as I drive past it a couple of times a week. It is a little more expensive than a lot of butchers or veg stalls which is why I didn’t give it full marks but I think its worth it.
There’s some lovely animals in the grounds to keep the kids occupied too. Some very strokeable donkey’s and some very smelly pigs. Incidentally, the pork here is fantastic and I’m guessing comes from the above mentioned smelly pigs!