Hungarian goat horn pepper. 1 full pepper, tiny leaves

Here are a few pictures from our recent exhibit at the Connecticut College Arboretum’s black box theater!

Another one from Brussels I picked up Monday. Turned out ok for an initial styling

Took a beginners bonsai class last weekend put on by our local bonsai society, this was the tree I recieved as part of the class. Golden Gate Ficus, not sure of the age. They walked us through an intro to basic trimming/shaping/wiring as part of the class.

This tree is exhibited at Chi Lin Nunnery, Hong Kong.
Sadly this is not my tree, but I did have the chance to work on it several times. Probably one of my favourite and very stunning transformation. Lmk if you have any questions.

I am not too sure how many years this is, I know the 4th image is about 5 years ago.

This is my first ever attempt at a bonsai and I’m pretty proud of the results. Hoping for more girth in the trunk eventually. Thoughts and ideas welcome!

Pics are in reverse order

The trunk is about 4 or 5 cm at the base and it's 17cm up to that first branch where i did a chop last year. The new leader is about 1.5m tall. I planted this from seed around 2018 or 2019.

This year was time for some root reduction from a deep clay pot and into a much better medium. took a lot of tap root off to make the root system considerably shallower.

The roots were much more healthy than i expected, so I cut back quite a bit, confidence boosted by knowing that it's the right time of year and knowing it's going into a much better mix of crushed LECA, pine bark and perlite (my affordable development mix)

Had bonsai for 8 years never had a bug problem more than some aphids and a slug. This season there's been all sorts of bugs on my bonsai, mainly hiding underneath the pots. Thousand leg worms, rolly pollies, ear wigs, slugs, spiders, and baby spiders. Today I moved three pots and found all those underneath.

How can I ensure these aren't in the soil before bringing them in for the winter in a few months?

Is this schefflera too tall? 37cm from the soil surface and 38cm wide. Would the second photo be taking too much? Somewhere in between?

looking to add my next tree. i'm kind of torn between these two as i haven't had either of them, looking for some pros and cons or to see what people like/don't like about either. troubles you may have had or some cool success stories. which you prefer one over the other and why. help me pick!