Starting out

[Peterlg]

Hi
Bonsai is on the bucket list.
Have grown some plants
Port Jackson Fig
Lilly Pilly
Cypress Pine
Pictures attached.
I am asking for advice on how to or what to do next.
Any advice very grateful.
Thanks Peter

[Promethius]

Hi Peter, welcome.
Unfortunately your pictures haven’t been attached to your post, so it’s difficult to comment on where to for your trees.
Where are you located? It’s possible to amend your profile details to include a city or town, which is often relevant to any advice.

[Watto]

Hello Peter and welcome.
Unfortunately there are no photos. On this site it is best if you photos are 1mb and as such most photos need resizing before attaching.

[Peterlg]

Hi
Bonsai is on the bucket list.
Have grown some plants
Port Jackson Fig
Lilly Pilly
Cypress Pine
Pictures attached.
I am asking for advice on how to or what to do next.
Any advice very grateful.
Thanks Peter

[Peterlg]

Hi
I am having trouble attaching the photos.
The photos are a pdf file 345KB.
Peter

[Akhi]

Best way is to take a screenshot on your mobile and then crop and it generally works for me.

[Promethius]

I haven’t tried to attach a pdf before.
A jpg or gif may work better.

[Peterlg]

Trying to attach photos again.
Peter

[TimIAm]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for sharing your trees and welcome to the forum!

Bonsai is a combination of art and horticulture. It's not just art because you need to at least keep a tree alive and it's not just horticulture because bonsai is an artistic representation, otherwise you'd just have a tree in a pot, not bonsai.

Because bonsai is an art, just like other arts, although you can do what you want, there are still fundamentals and a long standing aesthetic.

The two are tied together because you need to understand the horticulture side of things to achieve the art side of things. So, there's always lots to learn. After many years, I'm still reading, still making mistakes and still learning.

For your trees, it's a good idea to search here or elsewhere for the same or similar trees to what you have for a goal that you would like to work towards. Then feel free to search on here and also ask lots of questions. There's plenty of regulars on here who can help.

If you're interested, I'd suggest having a quick read through this recent discussion which is a brief discussion on styling bonsai and some of the guiding principals (see treeman's post in that thread). viewtopic.php?f=6&t=30688

[dansai]

As mentioned above, its good to have a location in your profile to help with advice.

I'm not too familiar with growing Callitris, but both the Fig and Lilly Lilly will reliably bud on older bare wood so you can let them grow strongly and cut them back hard. The strong growth will allow the tree to thicken, then you can cut back fairly low and let it grow again which allows you to develop some interest and taper. Depending on the size of tree you want this can take a few years for something small, or over 10 to get a large thicker tree.