For some reason, one of my neighbors rakes up all his decorative wood
chips every spring and replaces them. I don't know why he does it but he
does. Every year he throws them in the trash but this year I agreed to
take the old wood chips off his hands. I'm not sure exactly what kind of
wood they are other than they're decorative.

I just built a 3'x10'x18"(high) planter that I need to fill. This is a
lot of dirt. I hoped to line the bottom 3 to 6" of the planter with
those used wood chips which I would get for free. I plan to layer about
2" of composted leaves on top of that and then the rest would be my dirt
mixture (part sand, perlite with top soil).

Some discussions here in the past mention that wood depletes the soil of
nitrogen. Does anyone think there would be a problem if the wood chips
are deep into planter like this? Are there any weird chemicals on these
chips that I should be concerned about? The first year for this planter
will just have wildflowers whose roots don't go more than 12" but I hope
to plant bigger things like a bush or two in there next fall for next
spring.