Attaching plants to wood

I've had trouble getting rhizomatous plants started on driftwood as well. The best thing to do is generally just to make sure they are secured in position (sometimes it's necessary to tie them in place, if they get moved a lot), and then to leave them alone. I've heard a lot of people claim that it only takes a few weeks, but my experience has been more like several months. By the time my Anubias nana had finally rooted into my driftwood, I had long since forgotten about it. The only success I ever had with java fern was when I just gave up on it and let it float around the tank freely. As soon as I try to attach it to something, it just drops all its leaves and becomes dormant, so I can't really offer much advice with that.

If you want to speed up plant growth, you can invest in a higher output lighting fixture and a CO2 system, but that's going to cost you some significant money (pressurized CO2 setups generally start around $80-100, though they don't cost much to maintain after that). As a sort of alternative to injecting CO2, you could use a liquid carbon source like Seachem Flourish Excel, or API CO2 Booster, but the main ingredient in these products is glutaraldehyde, to which certain plants are very sensitive, so just do some research on it before going that route. It isn't nearly as effective as pressurized CO2 injection, but I did see a noticeable difference when I used CO2 Booster, vs. no added carbon.

As for other plants to grow, that will depend on whether or not you decide to upgrade your lighting and add CO2. With your current setup, you'll probably be restricted to low-light species like Cryptocoryne, Bacopa, Rotala rotundifolia, Hygrophila, etc. With high light and CO2, there is an immense variety of plants you could keep.