The landscaping industry has a green thumb but lacks manpower

Driven by a "growing demand for nature and a better quality of life", the sector (140.300 workers) has invested 640 million euros this year and created 8.100 net jobs in two years.

Private individuals are driving the market (49% of activity, or more than 4 billion euros), far ahead of private companies (25,5%) and public markets (24,5%).

According to Nicolas Leroy, president of the economic commission of Unep, the French "need breathing room, they need gentleness, they need more well-being".

"They realized that it was good for them," Mr. Leroy told AFP, "that this direct daily contact with nature soothed them, brought them tranquility, reconnected them to essential values."

But this vitality is hitting a wall: more than one in two companies (54%) are struggling to recruit permanent staff.

"In concrete terms, we estimate that we are creating 30 jobs per day and we could double that number," Mr. Leroy stated.

According to him, "the training sector has not kept pace with the (...) exponential growth in activity".

Far from simple maintenance, landscape professions today cover the greening of buildings (roofs, walls), ecological engineering, and technical tree care.

The sector highlights stable jobs: 81% of employees are on permanent contracts and 95% are full-time.

In this context, Mr. Leroy said he was "deeply concerned" about the draft finance bill, which plans to reduce the tax credit for "gardening work".

This measure, which concerns "approximately 18.000 companies", is not aimed "at wealthy households", he insisted, but "contributes to the comfort of the middle classes".

"The average customer of landscaping companies is families, it is elderly people who need it," he stressed, denouncing a "false economy" that would create "a truly colossal risk to employment."