Assuming you mean "Lucky Bamboo" --not actual bamboo), I have all three plants and use gritty mix for all three. You can do a search for "Al's Gritty mix" and should find endless amounts of info on it. Good luck! Grace

Your questions are probably better suited for the Container Gardening Forum, link below Here is a link that might be useful: Container Gardening

Why not try to make your own Cocktail tree? Just buy a nice tree from the nursery and see if you can get some different types of budwood from friends. Grafting is surprisingly easy. Here is a link that describes in great detail how to graft (T-budding is easiest). I just tried it for the first time myself about a month ago and out of 8 attempted grafts it looks like 7 took. I did not even have to buy a grafting knife or grafting tape. I just used a razorblade for a shaving safety razor and some teflon tape that I had laying around the house. Here is a link that might be useful: grafting link

I have a small, shallow wooden planter that might be slightly larger than 12" but not by much. I like to plan a prostrate rosemary, a thyme and sometimes a third plant depending on what I find at the nursery. Some of the thymes are very slow growing and the rosemary doesn't seem to mind being crowded. I have a lemon verbena in a pot that's about 12" across but deep. It turns into a small shrub during the summer. I like to plant lemon thyme at the base. I grow several basils but I agree they can get very large so I have a few plants in each pot and do not plant anything with them. Since I'm in NH with a shorter growing season, that might make a difference. A common garden sage grows fairly quickly and is happy becoming a small shrub in my garden. The variegated sages, however, grow very slowly and sometimes don't survive a New England winter. I would consider planting a variegated sage and a thyme in the same 12" pot but they would need re-potting in the fall.