A semi-professional footballer, Hayden-Smith planted the remembrance garden for the victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster. He is co-director of Grow2Know with Danny Clarke, helping young people and disadvantaged communities with gardening projects. He regularly appears on TV gardening programmes.
23 September 1996
London UK
Born to Egyptian-Kuwaiti mother and Italian-Jamaican father in London.
2017 – Grenfell tragedy, Hayden-Smith returns from playing football in Austria and starts to reclaim and green London spaces, becoming ‘the Guerrilla gardener’
2019 – Formation of Grow2Know
2021- RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival
2021-RHS Chelsea Flower Show
2021-Nick Knowles Better Homes
2022- Your Garden Made Perfect (Series 2)
Hayden-Smith was born in London and grew up in North Kensington, the eldest of three siblings, with his mum Nancy. He began playing football at the age of three at Westway, a community resource near his home. By the time he was thirteen Hayden Smith’s talent attracted invitations to try out for football academies, including Brentford and Fulham. The answer was always ‘not yet’ or ‘you’re too small.’ His mother Nancy was diagnosed with terminal cancer around this time, and as a result his performance both on and off the pitch suffered.
At 17 he discovered he was going to be a dad and took a break from football to be an active parent. In an interview with BBC Sport, he comments
“It was very unexpected, and I had to adapt my life. My dad was never around and that kind of showed me how not to be. So there was no question in my mind – I would be there for my son.”
Hayden-Smith had trials with several English football teams including Crystal Palace, Fulham, and Newcastle. Just as success seemed assured he broke his wrist in training and missed pre-season, and potentially a first team place, with Newcastle. Despite this setback he persevered and played for Canvey Island, and then spent a season in Austria playing for FC Kitzbuhel.
The Austrian experience, whilst successful from a football perspective, was made more difficult by racism. His landlord burst into his apartment in the middle of the night calling out racial slurs, and eventually evicted him for no reason. He slept in his car between apartments for a spell, not telling the club as he says he didn’t’ want to cause any hassle.
On 17 June 2017fire broke out in Grenfell Tower, a 24-floor residential building in London. Seventy-two people died, among them were friends of Hayden-Smith.
Hayden-Smith grew up beneath Grenfell Tower and often played on a nearby pitch. He flew home from Austria as soon as he heard about the fire. When he realised the extent of the disaster, he turned down a contract extension in Austria, and stayed home with his family. Other factors in this decision were that by this stage his mother was extremely ill, and he had a young son to raise.
In the wake of the tragedy the community responded in diverse ways – through art and music for example. Hayden-Smith found a form of therapy through gardening and began to pick up leftover plants from local nurseries to create a garden on a piece of wasteland – the Grenfell Garden of Peace. He continued to ‘green’ waste plots in the city and became known as the Guerrilla Gardener.
From this start grew the gardening project, Grow2Know, a charity whose mission is to empower and build in London’s neglected communities. Hayden-Smith co-directs the charity with Danny Clarke, of The Black Gardener fame. It also aims to promote community gardening, and encourage the next generation of gardeners, such as Hayden-Smith himself. The community went on to reclaim three more spaces: Acklam Nature Project, Maxilla Nursery, and Kingsnorth House.
He continued footballing – playing for Rising Ballers (RB), a You Tube football club and college system designed to help talented individuals get into the professional game. Through RB, Hayden-Smith worked on projects with influential brands and people such as Nike, Adidas, and Copa90 Hayden-Smith chose to join Grenfell Athletic, a club founded after the tragedy to help remember what happened, and to continue the fight for justice.
The success of Grow2Know meant more media appearances for Hayden-Smith, as the community gardening he was becoming known for continued to gain popularity. This became his first step on the path to becoming a TV presenter.
In July 2021 Hayden Smith appeared on the second programme of the BBC coverage of the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival and shared with the BBC Gardener’s World team his take on his first ever visit to a flower show. He returned on the third and final episode of the show to present a feature on the festival’s community allotments. Later that same year, Hayden Smith again joined the BBC team in a presenting role at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. A stint on Nick Knowles Better Homes in November 2021 followed.
AS of 2022, Hayden-Smith joined the Your Garden Made Perfect (BBC2) team, as the small Garden Designer from series two.
Grow2Know will be exhibiting at Chelsea in 2022. Inspired by Notting Hill’s Mangrove Nine in the 1970s and the global deforestation of mangroves, Hands Off Mangrove aims to raise awareness of the severe impacts that racial and environmental injustices are having on our planet.
“Chelsea Flower Show is 10 minutes from where I live and it’s not relatable to me or anyone I know,” he says. “But this year we’re doing a garden there paying respect to the Mangrove Nine.”
Hayden-Smith lives in London with his partner Opal and their two young children, Luca and Jazz. His mum Nancy died in 2020.
https://grow2know.org.uk/whose-london-tayshan-hayden-smith/
Credits (where info sourced from)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/56720750
https://firsttimefinish.co.uk/2021/02/14/tayshan-hayden-grenfell-athletic-story/
https://dml-uk.com/our-clients/tayshan-hayden-smith/
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/tayshan-hayden-smith/profil/spieler/485654
https://www.gardenersunearthed.com/2022/02/tayshan-hayden-smith.html
