What a cute little pig! Purple heart is Tradescantia pallida it has a somewhat vining habit and roots easily from the joints. Makes little purple pink flowers but is really grown for the deep purple foilage. It will be darker in sun but does great in shade as well. It tolerates dryness and moisture. I found some growing in one spot of my yard and just hacked it all up and planted it around- it seems to have took. I think Persian Shield would do okay under brugs too. It can grow up to 5 ft but you can keep it cut to a decent height. Some Crotons would probably work in florida too but might have to be brought in during winter. I hear the yellows do better in sun vs. the darker reddish colors. They like a lot of humidity and would have to be cut back when they got too tall as well. I had crotons under some potted brugs in LA and they did okay but were in afternoon shade. Here is a link that might be useful: purple heart

I have around 100 different minis, so lots to trade. I don't have Cat's Eye, it's not a good grower, but have plenty of other choices. I'm looking for Frozen Margarita, Silvery Slugproof, Maui Blue Kittens, and High Noon. I'm located between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.

I went and got my wide bowl pot all ready and ran out to pick up some minis. Didn't have any at the nursery and I came home with a biggie in a 5 gallon pot and a concrete angel. lol. Then I was going to repot the biggie into a larger pot, but it was so much work getting it out of the 5 g. pot I said "no way - I'll plant it". Then when it took me 3 hours to dig the hole in the hard, dry dirt with a post-hole digger, for which it took me 2 days to recover: well here we go with minis in a pot gardens again. Now you'uns got my juices flowing again. A month ago I was at a local that had several mouse ears and some others. Might just go out and peak. Oh well, I get my ss check in a week so maybe my budget won't suffer so badly. Shame on you people for throwing temptations at me like this. lol Les

Thanks so much for the suggestions. I added some leaf mulch today just to see how it would look and it actually looks really great. I guess in my effort to mulch, I just mimicked how nature would fill in the bare ground of a real woodland! No wonder the leaf mulch seems to look "right." I'm sure the plants will like it too. It's interesting that you mentioned the Dicentra eximia/Fringed Bleeding heart because I was looking at the Bleeding Heart today and thought its leaves looked unusual. The nursery tag says Dicentra spectabilis but the leaves look more like a Dicentra eximia. It's possible the nursery put a spectabilis tag on an eximia I suppose. I didn't know that Dicentra eximia doesn't go dormant in the summer -- thanks for the info! We have a pink Dicentra spectabilis that goes dormant in the summer but the "Alba" is new, so we haven't seen it through a summer yet. Maybe we're in luck and the new "Alba" spectabilis is actually an eximia. I was planning on planting some ferns around it so that when it goes dormant the ferns will cover the fading foliage, but maybe now I won't need to. Wow, Cardinal plant--it must be beautiful. We have violets popping up all over now too (in our lawn), so I'm transplanting some of them to the mini "woodland". Thanks again for everyone's help!