Cha-ching! (9-23)

You'd be hard-pressed to find a garden center with a bigger heart than that shown at Portland Nursery. While the two-store retail operation in Portland, Ore., has made a huge mark in the community as a stellar resource for plants and gardening products, a bigger legacy might be interactive projects in which staff members routinely become involved.

Those good folks -- and this great garden center -- have invested time and money in no fewer than 11 community service projects, details of which can be found on the company website. But this isn't just a "feel good" list of benevolent bullet points; each project's implementation and progress is chronicled in the "Giving Back" section of the site. And these inspirational stories point to a special trait all businesses can emulate.

Clearly, the folks at Portland Nursery aren't doing these kind works for kind words; rather, they're "investing" in a very moving way to make sure that their community is better. And while there's literal "Cha-ching!" to be had because of this commitment, it's the broader, corporate "Cha-ching!" that makes this garden center special.

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