Other landscapers also report a labor shortage.
"Our difficulty in hiring is horrible," says Cathy Gurney of Sierra Landscape & Maintenance in Chico, north of Sacramento. "We've been advertising for a supervisor, which would pay $15 to $25 an hour with full benefits. No one qualified is applying."
Some economists say such accounts don't mean that Americans won't do some jobs, but that employers such as Gurney simply aren't paying enough.
"Every time someone says illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans or do jobs Americans don't want, I want to scream," UCLA economist Christopher Thornberg says.
This argument makes Smallwood want to scream herself. On a recent job that went into overtime, a Diversified Landscape foreman, Vincente Sanchez, was making $52.34 an hour.
"How high can you go?" she says.
Outside her office one recent afternoon she encounters Bennie Gray, who says he earns about $60,000 a year detailing cars -- a different kind of work, but also done in the hot sun. Gray, a thickly muscled African American, acknowledges that on an hourly basis, he might make more working for Smallwood, but can't imagine it.
"I'm not going to lie," says Gray, 48. "I don't want to work that hard. My ancestors had to work in the fields. My mom still talks about the splinters and sores."
Smallwood's employees have their own theories about the shortage of workers.
"They don't know what the wages are, and they're scared to get their hands dirty," says Marco Camberos. He's running one side of a two-person auger that will be used to dig about 7,000 one-foot holes along a mile of median in Laguna Nigel. The team is planting evergreen shrubs.
Camberos is making $18 an hour as a trainee. At 26, he has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from UC Riverside and plans to open his own landscaping business. "This is the means to an end," he says.
Telling Americans there are jobs they won't do isn't necessarily a way to endear yourself to them. Addressing a group of union leaders in Washington last month, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the members of his audience wouldn't pick lettuce even for $50 an hour.
When some in the crowd angrily dissented, McCain demurred: "You can't do it, my friends." Three dozen demonstrators later showed up at the senator's Phoenix office, bearing lettuce-picker applications as well as heads of lettuce.
