No experience with woodchip garden, so can't say for sure. Mine grow in the garden soil, and take up something like a square foot each. I have space between them to allow for expansion. Growing from seed is very slow - I have self-seeders growing and they are nowhere near a picking size after two years. At one stage I moved the crowns from a fire-prone site to the house garden and it took three years for them to start producing the more than pencil thickness pickable stems. - that's the same as when the original crowns were planted. It's a long-haul crop!