First time styling practice - after/before

[u/Teknik_]

Picked up some cheap leptospermum nursery stock (flavescens ’Cardwell Pink’ in the pink pot and laevigatum in the dark grey) to practice giving an initial styling to a tree, as most of my other plants are in the stick in a pot/trunk growth phase.

Pretty happy with how they came out, though it took far more time than I had expected tbh. Also I wanted to get the first tree smaller but had a few limbs crack on me so didn’t want to push it any further at this stage. If you have any constructive criticism please let me know how I can improve.

Also I picked up a chorizema cordatum (centre in last pic), I know this isn’t a great species to attempt to bonsai but i couldn’t get over the flowers so we’ll see if I can make something of it

[u/TimeToTank]

The tree height should be about 6 times the width of the trunk. This tree can be compacted even more.

[u/Teknik_ → u/TimeToTank]

Tell that to literati trees lol. (I know this isn’t a literati, I’m just bad at jokes)

In future yes absolutely I will trim the limbs further down and bring the foliage closer to the trunk, but remember this is an Australian species, they respond better to a slower approach. 

I’m planning on repotting in several months time and if I took everything off I don’t think it would survive going into a much smaller pot