I’m a former Premier League star who retired at 32 for career in gardening – I created a fertiliser loved by top clubs

9 months ago 69

FORMER Premier League star Henri Lansbury is pulling up trees in the gardening world after hanging up his boots.

Lansbury retired last summer after a spell with Luton and has since focused his time on his lawn fertiliser company called Grass Gains.

Lansbury came through at Arsenal and played eight times for the club[/caption]

His love for gardening was born in lockdown after a gardener was unable to attend to his lawn.

Soon the former England youth was mowing three times a week before he decided to launch his own products to help fellow enthusiasts get the best out of their back garden.

Grass Gains fertiliser is now sold in Homebase and Lansbury has mown the pitches at Arsenal’s famous Hale End academy, having come through at the club before making eight appearances for the Gunners.

He has also worked on pitches at Fulham, Monaco and Genk, while Grass Gains’ ‘Lawn Bulk’ fertiliser has received glowing reviews from the likes of Micah Richards, Luton star Tom Lockyer and former Wales international James Chester.

Speaking about the fertiliser, Lansbury, whose other clubs include West Ham, Aston Villa and Forest, said: “A lot of it is to do with branding. You see the other companies… all plastic boxes, quite dull, quite boring. I’m just trying to lift the gardening world.

“If you make your grass nice, it’s like another room in the house. You could add £10-15k if your grass is nice. Don’t just chuck all your rubbish into the garden.

“A lot of our complaints are about grass not growing in certain areas. It’s full of bricks, full of plastics. They kill the soil. Our product lifts the soil and helps it regenerate.”

Lansbury, 33, describes himself as a “lawn artist” and he was crowned Turf’s top influencer 2023 by Turf Business.

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Lansbury dreams of working on the Arsenal pitch one day but for now he is happy to give back to local clubs.

He added: “We’ve done Fulham, we’ve done Genk and we’re in at Monaco soon.

“We’re going in the right direction, a few local clubs have asked for it and we’ve put it down on their pitches as well.

“I want to give back to the local clubs really, I want them to have a nice pitch to play on, there’s nothing better than a kid running on a pitch with stripes on it and that’s what it does, it helps stripe it off.”