Police investigating a possible break-in at the home of a turf producer discovered he was growing another type of grass.

Officers had been called to Stephen Barton's home in January last year after a report of a suspected burglary.

But when they arrived at the property, in Harville Road, Boughton Aluph, near Ashford, it was not the smell of a lawn they detected.

Canterbury Crown Court heard the officers were struck by the smell of cannabis, which they tracked to the garage.

Inside the building, which had its windows blacked-out, was a cannabis factory with 133 plants growing.

Crispian Cartwright, prosecuting, said the plants could have yielded more than one kilo of the class B drug, with a possible street value of more than £30,000.

But the judge accepted "although there was a commercial element to the enterprise", Barton was growing the plants for his own use.

Dominic Webber, defending, said 54-year-old Barton - who has run a turf-selling business for 32 years - suffers from a tissue disorder known as ehlers-danblos syndrome.

"The illness is getting progressively worse and he has had two minor heart attacks," he said.

Mr Webber asked for any prison sentence to be suspended.

But Barton, who admitted producing cannabis, was jailed for 16 months and now faces an investigation under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

The equipment he used to grow the plants was ordered to be destroyed.