It is a popular trend in Corporate America to build and offer company gardens. They are places where employees can spend coffee breaks with their hands in the dirt (if they want to). Participants can observe the growth of and harvesting of produce that is often used in company cafeterias and the benefits are increasingly a way to increase morale in a trying economy where raises and cash incentives are more scarce.

I am completely intrigued by the trend — as a business opportunity , but also as an exciting trend towards cultivating more gardeners. So, for the next few days, I am going to give over the daily garden to company gardens. First up is a peek in to Google’s Mountain View Headquarters garden.

It is called the Growing Connections Garden and features heavy use of EarthBoxes which seem to appeal to the scientific minds in the company. Among other technological advances, the EarthBox uses Sub Irrigation Technology (SIP). SIP employs a reservoir at the bottom of the container that waters plants at the root for higher yields with less water.

Their campus also features some other interesting corporate planting and landscape architecture.

images from upward bound summ…., Never Wood High, Diane, East Tennessee Wildflowers, googlified, and Tammy Camp.