In the latest episode of The Underground, recorded live at Glee 2025, Phil and Kate sit down with Steve Harper, MD at Grass Gains and Chair of the Responsible Sourcing Scheme, and Simon Taylor and Helen Thomas from Empathy, Plantworks. Together, they paint a clear picture of where plant nutrition and soil health are heading next – and what that means commercially for garden centres and suppliers.
This is not a technical debate about fertiliser for its own sake. It is about how you future-proof your ranges for peat-free, protect category reputation, and use clever attachment selling to grow basket value without compromising customer trust.
From NPK to soil health: A shifting foundation
Grass Gains’ roots are firmly in the professional turf world. Its products were developed for Premiership football pitches and high-pressure sports surfaces before ever reaching a garden centre shelf.
That background shows in the way Steve talks about lawn care. Rather than simply pushing more nitrogen to make the lawn look green, Grass Gains builds in bio-stimulants to help the grass cope with stress. As he explains, grass is “the most stressed plant” in the garden, trampled on, played on and abused by pets, so supporting it with bio-stimulants and fungi makes a measurable difference over time.
The wider message for retailers is simple: customers are ready to move beyond basic NPK. Positioning ranges around resilience, soil life and visible results – backed by credible product stories – is where the growth is going to come from.
Peat-free needs different feeds, not just different bags
One of the most pointed moments in the conversation comes when Steve talks about plant food for peat-free compost.
“The market has been moving to peat free rapidly,” he says, “but we’re just selling the same legacy plant foods to it.”
His argument is straightforward:
- Most peat-free blends, whether coir, bark or wood fibre, are already “stacked out with potassium”.
- Legacy feeds simply add more potassium to a system that doesn’t need it.
- Excess potassium can actually block uptake of nitrogen and phosphate, leaving customers with underperforming plants and a sense that peat-free compost “doesn’t work”.
Grass Gains’ response has been to launch Bloom, a plant food formulated specifically for peat-free: the nutrients and trace elements gardeners expect, but no potassium, plus added magnesium to help stressed plants make better use of the nutrients already there.
For retailers and suppliers, the commercial point is clear:
- Think about compost and feed as a single system, not separate categories.
- Matching the wrong feed to peat-free risks complaints, lower repeat sales and more work for staff at the information desk.
- The right matched nutrition can protect both the category and your brand’s reputation.
Overlay this with Steve’s work on the Responsible Sourcing Scheme, which is developing a quality standard and accreditation mark to show not only how responsible a compost is, but whether it actually works.
His call to action for retailers is very practical: treat compost like a perishable product, not a once-a-year bulk buy. “Compost needs to be rotated… buying 200 pallets in January and then working your way through it for the next 12 months is not the way to buy peat free compost.”
Better rotation, fresher stock and peat-free appropriate feeds are not just operational details. They are part of the customer experience, and they will decide whether peat-free feels like progress or a compromise.
Biofertilisers, gut health and “Yakult for plants”
If Grass Gains represents the professional turf mindset crossing into retail, Empathy brings the science lab. Helen and Simon describe how their biofertilisers and mycorrhizal products began in agriculture – working with farmers to improve sustainable yields – and have been translated into products for home gardeners.
At the heart of their message is soil biology. Bio-fertilisers are “products with a living organism that will improve a plant’s nutrient use efficiency”. Once you understand that, Simon says, “you start to swap over… we need to be going in this direction.”
The analogies matter. Helen talks about once calling these products “Yakult for plants”, while Simon likens a plant’s root system to “our stomach turned inside out”. Soil health, he argues, is where governments are heading and where gardeners now have “direct access” to the same tools farmers are using.
For garden retail, this creates a strong, multi-layered story:
- A sustainability narrative rooted in real science, not vague greenwash.
- A way to make “invisible” bacteria and fungi feel intuitive for consumers already familiar with gut health and microbiomes.
- A pipeline of innovation: Empathy’s R&D team and soil scientists continuously feeding new formulations and plant-specific products into the range.
It is also visually powerful. Helen describes how the refreshed packaging, especially on lines like their bulb starter, creates a cohesive, striking display when merchandised as a full bio-fertiliser range.
Designing a smarter mix for the next season
Looking ahead, the most successful garden retailers and suppliers will not be the ones who simply “add another channel”. They will be the ones who:
- Treat loyalty as a strategic asset, not a tick-box exercise
- Use paid media carefully, to amplify what already works commercially
- Invest in the brand, creative and customer experience that make every channel work harder
The conversations with Vanessa and Aaron underlined something we see again and again in our own work: the real gains come when data, digital and design are working together, not competing for budget.
If you are reviewing your marketing mix for the next season, the questions might be less about “Should we do loyalty?” or “Should we do more ads?” and more about:
- “What are we asking these channels to do for the business?”
- “Are we telling a clear, consistent story wherever our customers meet us?”
That is the space where we love to work with clients: helping brands in the home and garden sector clarify their story, sharpen their proposition and create campaigns that connect, whether they are delivered via a loyalty email, an in-store poster or a sponsored post in someone’s Sunday scroll.
Attachment selling that grows basket value, not clutter
One of the most practical parts of the conversation is about attachment sales.
Root Grow has long been known as an add-on with plants, but Simon argues it should be treated like a true impulse essential: “For me, a product like Root Grow should be on every till-end in every garden centre… It’s like batteries for plants.”
When one garden centre group chose Root Grow as the focus of an internal competition and put it on all their till ends, they quadrupled sales without cannibalising other products. It was, as Simon puts it, “a genuine add on sale”.
Set against rising costs – wages, National Insurance and energy – the maths is compelling. As Phil notes, some centres have calculated they only need to lift average basket value by around 79p to make a meaningful difference. The right attachment strategy can deliver that without heavy discounting or major price hikes.
Empathy’s broader approach is to combine:
- Dual siting plant-specific bio-fertilisers next to their associated plants (rose feed with roses, acer feed with acers), and
- Consistent recommendations at the point of purchase: “any time anyone’s taking a plant home, take home some Root Grow.”
For retailers, there is a wider principle: attachment selling works best when the product clearly supports the main purchase and is easy to explain in a sentence.
Training, tech and telling the story in-store
Complex terms like mycorrhizal fungi and beneficial bacteria can be intimidating for staff as well as shoppers. Helen is clear that this only works if brands invest in education: online resources, rep-led training, short video modules and simple in-store materials. There is even a QR-linked 15-minute training session available via their catalogue.
Then there is Emily, Empathy’s virtual assistant, using digital technology to guide customers through product and plant questions in real time. The aim is not to replace expert staff, but to give both teams and customers a consistent, always-available source of advice that can gently point towards the right products.
Grass Gains is taking a similar view on communication, using social media and TikTok lives to educate consumers about topics like potassium in peat-free, while planning more investment in in-store point of sale to tell the “designed for peat free” story at shelf.
For brands, the lesson is that science alone is not enough. You need a clear narrative, consistent visuals and simple training tools that help retailers bring that story to life.
From substrate to strategy
What comes through strongly from both conversations is that plant nutrition is no longer a quiet, background category. It cuts across:
- Your peat-free strategy and stock rotation policies.
- How you differentiate ranges in a crowded market.
- The way you grow basket value through relevant attachment sales.
- The training, tools and stories you give your staff.
At WrightObara, we see soil health and plant nutrition becoming one of the core storytelling opportunities for home and garden brands, not just a technical detail on the back of a bag. There is huge potential to join the dots between product development, packaging, point of sale, content and staff training so that customers experience a coherent, confidence-building journey from compost aisle to till.
If you are reviewing your own approach – whether as a brand or a retailer – this episode of The Underground is a useful listen. And if you would like a creative partner to help turn soil health, bio-fertilisers and peat-free into a compelling commercial story, we’d be happy to talk.
Check out the full episode of The Underground Podcast, featuring Steve Harper, MD of Grass Gains and Chair of the Responsible Sourcing Scheme, and Simon Taylor and Helen Thomas from Empathy, Plantworks, below: