Gladys Phuza, 85, is the oldest of all six Fezeka gardeners. By all accounts, she is also the strongest. "She is stronger than any of us!" testifies fellow gardener Joyce Nyebela. "Old people are made from different clay". Puza also eats the most spinach of all the women.

Regina Shiceka, 65, spent most of her life cleaning hotels. Now she spends her days "tending to the small children in the garden." She has always eaten vegetables, "but not fresh out of the ground like these ones."

Shaba Esiteng, 77, was moved from central Cape Town to Gugulethu in 1963 by the apartheid government. She worked as a domestic worker for most of her life and brought up five children on her own. "If I had the garden before, while I was young," she says, "I couldn't have gone to work - I would have worked in the garden."

Phillipina Ndamane, 72, supports her sister and nine small children (six grandchildren and three others, all orphans). The vegetables she grows go a long way towards feeding them. "I like this garden so much," she says. "I will carry on gardening till I die."

Maggie Mbovu, 68, grew up in the rural Eastern Cape province and brought up five children, of whom one still lives with her. She is grandmother to 14 grandchildren.

Joyce Nyebela, 65, found herself out of a job when the family she was working for left the country after Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990. For the next eight years she did piece work, but now she comes to the garden every day, and has even persuaded her son Michael to help out. "When I come here... everything is sweet and I'm happy," she says.