Care’s repair, landscape’s labor

In contemporary landscape discourse, an ethic of care is grounded in caring for the earth. This ecological agenda is the basis for which we indirectly provision human needs. It is not yet care that directly centres the human being. In fact, the work we claim as care is very often conducted by Latine workers whose labour is conditioned by the instrumentalist relations of capital. Herein I detail the U.S. landscape industry’s dependence on the H2-B guestworker visa program, and site labour exploitation at the heart of today’s landscape work. Thus, maintenance on our claims to care through landscape production is critical. Frameworks of caring-with set forth from feminist discourse can guide this politico-personal ambition of unambiguous care for landscape labourers. We’ve judiciously tended to one face of our caring labour—the cultivation of ecological life. Now we must unveil another aspect: the cultivation of flourishing human relations.