Better Flower Pot

Flower pots tend to come in two main types. One type is a simple container that can hold a fair amount of water, which can actually be too much for a plant (the roots can rot).

Another type has a hole in the bottom, and this type sits in a shallow bowl. When water is added to the pot, much of it flows out the hole into the bowl. One can use the water level in the bowl as an indicator of when more water should be added to the pot. However, here the problem is that the the dirt in the pot can be mostly too dry, since the water is mostly down at the bottom, and only the bottom-most dirt is wet all the time. The plant as a whole might not be getting enough water.

So, imagine an empty flower pot, the kind with a hole in the bottom, that also has a kind of "terrace" on the inside wall of the pot. We don't want this terrace to be flat/level, we want it to be able to hold some water. Now imagine two or three such terraces inside the pot (or more if the pot is tall). We still have the central volume of the pot for holding the plant. And it should still be easy to fill it with soil.

When we add water, we pour it along the inside wall of the pot. This water can fill the terrace, and then flow over the inside terrace wall, and down to the next terrace. Then that terrace can be filled, and so on. Eventually water flows out the hole at the bottom, and starts to fill the shallow bowl.

Since the plant is in the center of all these terraces, only its side-ways-growing roots will reach them. The plant actually has a choice regarding how much root to grow/immerse into the saturated soil in the terraces.

As before, the water level in the bowl lets us know when more water should be added to the pot. Only now we know that while the bowl has been drying, plenty of water had also been present inside the main volume of the flower pot. The plant should have a much-lower risk of dying of thirst.