The first photos I took in the USA were of a small crew of gardeners working for private home owners in a suburb of Miami. In talking to them a little bit I realized that their morale was rather low because the economic crisis was hitting them full force. They told me that in times of recession competition was tough and their business was one of the first to be affected, because property owners would then take it upon themselves to maintain their own gardens.

It was in Homestead, a little community south of Miami, that I took the images in the nursery. I had come principally to document the labour employed in intensive agriculture (see ‘‘The Work that Sustains Us’’) and was surprised to find so many nurseries. I decided to treat it as minor subject. In Naples, a much bigger city, and also the wealthiest on Florida’s east coast, one morning I watched the intricate weaving of little landscaping trucks in the exclusive district of Gourdon Street.