Big picture: On The Verge, by Nick Cunard

“Due to constant stealing we have only put a few plants on the trolley,” reads one sign. It’s not all that surprising. What’s more interesting – and somehow life-affirming – is how many people put their faith in the passing British public to cough up for runner beans, kindling, eggs, leeks and other wares they sell outside their homes. → Photograph: Nick Cunard

Honesty boxes go only so far, though. One can only hope that the previous owner of “Plums 60p bag” had already emptied the upturned jam jar acting, you assume, as a cash box. → Photograph: Nick Cunard

Other owners have rigged up CCTV cameras, including one woman who sells homemade jam in elegant jars and freshly baked scones, and has done every Sunday for the past eight years. It gives new meaning to the term “cottage industry”. → Photograph: Nick Cunard

Photographer Nick Cunard started noticing these verge-side retailers while driving to Somerset with his girlfriend, or to Suffolk to visit his parents. → Photograph: Nick Cunard/Nick Cunard

He was drawn by the unintentionally comic handwritten notes and the sheer variety of products: dining chairs, prams, bikes, a rabbit hutch, and a blue MG parked at the end of a drive. → Photograph: Nick Cunard

For fruit and veg, it makes sense to sell things this way. But for nonperishables, eBay might be a better bet. → Photograph: Nick Cunard

How many motorists pause long enough to spot these things? But human nature is funny: we often don’t know what we want until we’re faced with it, with a car boot ready to take it home in. → Photograph: Nick Cunard

For many items, such as furniture or vacuum cleaners, we usually leave them on the street, up for grabs, to save us having to haul them to a charity shop. → Photograph: Nick Cunard

Is it a sign of the times that stuff we used to give away for free is now being sold? If the recession has killed our spirit of goodwill, the government has a lot to answer for. Photograph: Nick Cunard