I was thinking perhaps a botany lab (similar to a company workshop) would be a good idea to increase value in certain crops, possibly open up some housing and allow more people in an FC to get into gardening. There could be a station for faster crossing with the returning harvest being only the crossed seed. Another station could work like a full garden plot for 1-3m gil and allow up to 2 plots per character*. Any character that makes use of the garden plots in the botany lab is unable to make use of any outside gardens. An added benefit of the botany lab could be a mass fertilizer/tending option (workshop parts required).
First off, the price tag is expensive, but less than buying a small housing plot on most servers. My hope is that this would encourage people who are buying up multiple houses simply for the garden space to find more value in simply having all their alts in a single fc owned house. As the botany lab allows for more plots than a small house at a lower cost than a small house it makes more sense to go this route. The restriction of not being able to use the outdoor gardens as well is simply in place to make buying a personal house for even more garden plots worthless.
Beyond an attempt to coax houses from those buying multiples just for the extra garden space, this allows for those in an FC that would like to do gardening the opportunity to do so without clashing with others' gardening plans. For large FCs, even the 3 plots allowed (if they're lucky enough to own one of a handful of large plots) isn't enough.
*edited.
