I got your email, Louise - Sorry, I've been away at a bonsai show & visiting friends/family. This is a tough one. As I understand it, you have a concrete block planter constructed atop a concrete slab, with no way for the water to make its way into the sand below the slab. Drilling holes in the block walls won't improve drainage. The only 2 ways to effectively improve drainage would be to make sure there is a 'bridge' between the soil in the planter and the sand below the concrete so the water can percolate through the soil, or to make sure the soil you use is porous enough that it holds little or no perched water. This would mean that your soil particles would have to be large & stable, insofar as their structure is concerned. Even the soil you see me holding above would be inappropriate for your application because that soil depends on the wicking action of the earth (in RBs) to ensure it doesn't remain saturated after rain/watering. It looks great, but if you have high standards it would be a disaster in a container or in your app. I'm thinking that about an 80% fraction of a mix of all purpose sand and all purpose gravel and 10% each of pine bark fines and Michigan (reed/sedge) peat or good compost would probably be the direction I would head. In subsequent years, I think all you'll need to do is mulch with pine bark to keep the soil healthy. If expense isn't a major consideration, you could use Turface MVP as the base ingredient for your soil. Topsoil and fine sand just isn't going to drain w/o help. The alternative would be to remove the old soil and cut a hole in the slab so water can drain from the soil in the planter, but it would have to be a hole of considerable size - preferably at the lowest point on the planter's bottom. If you have pictures, it's possible that something else might be devised that will allow the water to move out of the soil via some sort of passive wicking mechanism that we/you could devise, but I'd have to see the application in order to envision the possibilities. There might be a way to employ a false bottom by placing FRP panel on top of cement blocks that are resting on the bottom & building it like a self-watering container in reverse - where you employ a wicking column of soil to REMOVE water instead of supplying it, but I don't know how far you want to chase the issue? ;-) AL

We live in Oklahoma, and have clay soil. My solution has been to take a pick ax, dig down at least a foot, remove the clay, then before putting in anything, take that axe and work up the remaining clay. Once the remaining clay has been stabbed and torn, put in some top toil or compost. THis is for drainage, and the added soil will never never combine with the clay. Once you have this part of the bed prepared, you have a hole that is at least 12 inches deep. Put in good top soil with some compost mixed in it. (Pure compost will create a swimming pool, and kill any plants.) Once you have filled the hole, water it, stomp on it, then continue filling higher and higher. Put in some plastic or metal around the sides of the bed that will hold the soil, and continue building it up. Again water and stomp. When you plant your roses, make them very very high. THey will begin to sink, but start with them high. You are planting in a modified raised bed. Little by little as time goes by, you will know when to add compost, and you will watch the drainage. If you need to display one rose, follow this process, and pretend that you are preparing a bed for 5 roses. The clay will begin mixing in with the top soil ----- never. As least never in the years we have been here, and that is since 1979. Peat moss will become as dry as a brick, and also will not mix well. This may not be true if you live in a wet area, but in Oklahoma, I don't use peat moss. If what I have written will not work for you, you might try putting in small rock under the 12 inches you have dug. Once you have prepared you bed and roses, you would need a good amount of mulch to also protect your plants. Be sure to be scientific with your watering, and I think you will be fine. Scientific with watering means that you should find an area to dig where there are not roses, and watch from time to time what the water effect is in that area. The clay that you remove can be a good product to use to border your beds. I hope this helps, Sammy

I would probably also go with a mix of shrubs and perennials (with pine straw in between) and avoid the ground-covers, for fear of them being aggressive. You could also make a simple path (bark chip or gravel) to occupy some of the space. I agree that you need to pull out the ivy first. We have cleared now about 1/3-1/2 acre of solid, knee-deep ivy, and if you don't get the roots out, it will come back. My husband "strimmed" the tops off as much as possible with one of those machines, so that we could at least see the root area (he's not very sensitive to poison ivy, which we also had a lot of). Then we've pulled it out by hand. Because the roots are so woody, you can pull them out quite successfully (unlike Mondo, which breaks off and leaves little pieces in the ground that then grow back). Here are a few other possibilities for perennials/shrubs (some evergreen): - Tiarella (Mobot says it needs constant moisture but that wet soil in winter will be fatal). I have some in full shade that is doing really well. I believe it is evergreen here (but not certain). Its native. - Big-leaved architectural plants like Fatsia japonica, Ligularia, Farfugium, Rodgersia (some of these are evergreen). - Actaea racemosa (same as Cimicifuga racemosa or Bugbane, this is native) - Lobelia (native too) if you have a spot with some sun There's also a dwarf form of the Sweetspire Esh suggested (Itea Virginica Little Henry), which gets only about 12-18" high. I bought an Illicium floridanum "Shady Lady" recently (at Pike, and HD has them at the moment too). It says it can tolerate full shade (I'm thinking of putting mine in full shade) and Jeff_AL on this forum told me his needed constant moisture, so that might be an evergreen shrub possibility for you (it gets about 6' tall). I'm linking below to a thread on the Perennials forum with a similar question. Here is a link that might be useful: perennials thread

One can use gypsum to "loosen" clay soil. I've experimented with it, and it did work in a heavy clay site, for about 8 years (well, that area is still draining well after 25 years, but...). The catch is simply that while gypsum will help the soil texture, it is effective only within the applied area, thus water will drain to the bottom of the improved site, but then drains *very* slowly or accumulates on top of the un-improved clay base. One must prepare/dig very deeply [or work on a slope] to allow enough area for the accumulated water to percolate from the bottom of the bed without saturated the root area of your growing plants. Personally, I prefer to use raised beds made by the lasagna method because: raised beds inherently have good drainage; the lasagna method gives a very good soil in a short time (you can actually plant annuals immediately in the raw/cooking lasagna); and a properly-based lasagna will smother almost all weeds that may have already been in the chosen site. Oh, and home-made lasagna may be high-labor, but it's NOT expensive -- something consider if you have a budget (or a love of new bulbs, lol).