Hi there! I'm sorry I don't have any real suggestions. I had to look up the Loves Lies Bleeding plant to see what it looks like! You must be going for something a little exotic, eh? Beautiful plant, but the page I saw on it said it liked full sun. Not sure that would work in the area you are planning to put it. Have you already come up with a solution? If nothing else, an annual like sweet alyssum would look, er, sweet coming out between the bars.

There are plenty of sites on "Hugel gardening" for better tasting veges. Yes, veges like tomatoes taste better when it's well-drained. I planted a row a tomatoes from the top of the hill, descending down ward to a low & poor drainage spot. The tomato from the top of the hill taste delicious (soil is quite dry), but the tomato at the bottom of the hill, where it's soaking wet clay ... taste awful !! Emgardener from Bay area (heavy clay, shady garden) ... posted how healthy his roses are in "Hugel pot", no diseases whatsoever. I notice that roses' root need oxygen, and Hugel pot helps with both aeration, perfect moisture, and drainage. When I have poor drainage in pots, my roses break out with both BS and mildew !! Emgardener (or Gardenseek in his blog) posted You-tube of his experiments with various mediums: the best result was with a vertical stump at the bottom of the pot, to wick up moisture along the wood-grain. The worst result was with 50% pine fines and 50% Turface. Bluegirl suggested 2" x 4" scrap woods ... great idea for the bottom of the pots. But I'm concerned: if the wood is treated with chemicals, then that would contaminate veges. like tomatoe or eggplant. One approach is to line the bottom of the pot with corn cobs (broken in to halves) ... corn cobs hold moisture evenly, better than wood chips. Another approach is to use the young, whitish coconut core sold at Ethnic stores. There's a soft-spot at the bottom of the core, which one pokes with screw-driver, then drink the juice. There's a site which showed how to crack the coconut along its equator. After the soft white core is eaten, the fibrous white shell can be used to line the bottom of the pot VERTICLALY. The shape is perfect, cone-shaped 5 inches height, with a 5" diameter. Roots can spread easily over the cone-shaped coconut coir. Coconut core is high in potassium and phosphorus. The advantage of fresh young coconut core is it retains water, without the added salt like coconut coir (salt is used in manufacturing process). Below is a link to the picture of fresh young coconut core, sold for $1 each in CA, it has fresh coconut juice and soft & creamy white inner ... taste better than pudding. Here is a link that might be useful: Picture of fresh coconut core (white fibers) This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Fri, Dec 6, 13 at 17:52

Thank you! I'll make sure to freeze them first to avoid germinating seeds later - I do that with all of my kitchen waste for my worms, anyway. This forum rocks!

Never heard of them, we built our friend a floor to ceiling aviary. Good luck with whatever you choose.