Judith, I just love your avatar photo.
In containers or the ground the results are pretty much the same. If the soil is not fast draining you will have issues with rot. I started having problems with the soil we put into the raised beds after two years or so. It had to much clay and not enough sand/grit/gravel. When we replace the wooden beds with cinder blocks we used a sandy loam mix from our local farm store. What a difference. This mix drains very fast.
Old wooden bed filled with clay soil mixed with compost. This did great for the first 3 years. Then it compacted and did not drain well at all during our many months of rain.
New beds filled with sandy loam mixed with forest compost.
The problem with the sandy loam mix is that it drains so fast that to keep the semps looking good your really need to do more watering in the summer. We get almost no rain during the summer months.
