Vonsgardens

Kainene,
I'll kick in on this one. We always talk about growing bigger trunks before we work on trees, that is kind of an American (or maybe western) thing. If you look, most of the trees that you see posted will be in the medium to large size ranges. This little tree can be styled by doing a significant reducton of the long branch and making a "shohin" juniper out of it. Keeping the trunk and branches in scale with "a tree" and then working to pot it down. Then with careful maintenance over the next few years it will begin to age (bark, branch thickness, etc) and become more convincing. I think the most amazing bonsai that I have ever seen was privet (Ligustrum sinensis(?)) that Suthin S. (Royal Bonsai Garden) developed- the trunk was less than 1/2-5/8"" in diameter- the leaves were less than 1/8th-3/16th of an inch and it was perfect at 4" tall. So, while I generally tend to agree with the comments on trunk thickening- it depends on what you want (remember- small bonsai other than easier to carry tend to be harder to maintain and a lot more care intensive than big ones....) Best of luck, John