Who Grows the Plants in Our Sacred Spaces?

We have distinct memories of fragrant lilies filling our churches and bright red poinsettias decorating the altar during Easter and Christmas Mass. Growing up in agricultural communities in Texas and Colorado, we understood even as children that these plants represented the special care given to the sanctuary during important celebrations.

The deep, persistent heat of late summer feels far removed from those memories. Yet lilies and poinsettias are being grown right now in nurseries across the Southeastern United States, where we both live. Workers in these nurseries grow poinsettias primarily from mid-summer through late fall, while Easter lilies are grown from late fall through spring and carefully timed to bloom around the shifting date of Easter.

It was not until adulthood that we learned about the workers who cultivate these flowers — and the conditions they work in. These workers spend long hours in intense heat growing the plants connected to traditions of our faith, often for poverty-level wages.

Today we work for the National Farm Worker Ministry, a faith-based organization that’s spent more than five decades bringing people of faith and conscience into relationship with farm workers and supporting workers as they organize for dignity and justice.

We have the privilege of hearing directly from nursery workers whose labor brings beauty to our places of worship, homes, schools, and public spaces. For example, in 2024, a worker center we partner with in South Florida called WeCount! surveyed more than 300 houseplant nursery workers in Miami-Dade County, one of the country’s major nursery-growing regions.

More than 20 percent reported that they had never or only sometimes received the minimum wage, and more than a third said they had been paid late. More than 60 percent reported receiving no paid sick or vacation leave. And more than half of the women surveyed reported experiencing sexual harassment or discrimination at work.

For the largely immigrant workforce that’s responsible for the plants we cherish, speaking out about workplace conditions can mean risking retaliation. As people of faith and conscience, we believe our role is to listen when workers speak about the conditions they face, stand alongside them as they organize for change, and use our own voices to call for the justice and dignity they are demanding.

One of the leaders in the houseplant industry is Miami-based Costa Farms, which employs both local and H-2A workers (temporary migrant workers with visas for agricultural work) at nurseries across the Southeast. The company reports on its website that its plants are sold at 3,540 locations across the country — including many well-known home and garden retailers.

Improving working conditions at Costa Farms, in other words, could have positive ripple effects for nursery workers across the country.

Nursery workers have developed a code of conduct outlining comprehensive standards for fair pay, safe working conditions, and protection from employer retaliation. And WeCount! is calling on Costa Farms to adopt the code and agree to independent monitoring and enforcement.

We believe Costa Farms should meet directly with the workers leading this campaign, negotiate in good faith toward an agreement that addresses the conditions workers are seeking to change, and use its influence to help raise standards across the houseplant industry.

Flowers and plants are woven into the rituals of our faith. They mark significant religious holidays, symbolizing new life, spiritual fortitude, and the gifts of the natural world. And they are tangible connections from our faith to the workers whose labor makes our celebrations possible — and whose dignity is inseparable from the beauty their labor helps create.

May knowing the workers behind these familiar plants deepen how we experience their beauty, and how we practice the faith that calls us to stand with them.

This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.