‘The nursery is like hell’: Here’s what it costs to grow your houseplants

Miami Herald · Max Klaver, Ashley Miznazi · 2026-11-05 10:00 UTC

Florida houseplant nursery workers toil in dangerous heat with few state or federal protections. Planting Justice presses for basic safety measures.

Dirt and sweat blotched Natividad Chaman’s blue jeans, as they had since 8:00 a.m., when she crouched over the first of hundreds of plantlets with the steak knife she uses as a shovel and got to weeding.

It was July 15, halfway through what would turn out to be the hottest July ever recorded in the United States, and the heat index had hit 108 degrees Fahrenheit for much of Miami-Dade County.

At the nursery where she earns her $14-an-hour living, Chaman schlepped a pink cooler, stocked with a dozen water bottles she brought from home, up and down the rows of efflorescent shrubs and emergent ferns. Every so often she’d sneak her hand under the cooler’s white top, fish out a bottle and start chugging, fanning herself as she caught her breath. Then she’d scan the field for her eagle-eyed bosses. A minute not spent on a plant is a minute of “break,” which means docked pay, she said.

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