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Picked up some young trees on holiday this year - a Japanese white pine and two young Itoigawa. With deciduous trees, I’d just add these to my collection of trees in pots and the ground for a few years, but new to evergreens and understand these won’t be as amenable to simply cutting back and chopping in a few years. Logic tells me to go for the mid ground - put them in large pots but still keep an eye on shaping and pruning. Would that make sense..?

...evergreens as you call them are an entirely new ball game: each pine species requires different techniques on different times, going from candle pinching,needle plucking, repotting and pruning on specific moments... and then you have the junipers... which are yet another ball game...
Take your time to read up and study before you do anything

Hi LucR. Thanks for response.

Yes I’d be the first to admit I dont really ‘get’ these trees yet in the way I get the cycle for deciduous trees. I am reading lots but different for every tree, quite confusing and often contradictory.

The one bit I cant find in any of my books or online resources is the treatment during the ‘just let them grow’ phase. Worried I’ll let them grow for a few years then find they’ll never back bud effectively, Ive missed an opportunity for early shaping, or i’ll just have to spend more years chasing foliage back. Really appreciate any thoughts on that bit.

PS Appreciate this is an international forum - in the UK ‘evergreen’ is the proper term not just what I call them

Trick is to work with escape or sacrifice branches. Let a branch grow out of the tree. Take away its lower foliage so it does shade out the remaining branches. The liw branchws to keep short near the trunk. Cut the escape branch once the trunk has the desired size. Repeat several times for taper and smaller cuts.

Yry to get tje sacrifice branches with movement in the first 10cm to have yins later. And/or keep igly ones at the future back of the tree.

Brilliant thank you that makes perfect sense - and I presume putting in bigger pot while this is happening will be best, particularly for the itoigawa. I like the idea of designing in sacrifice branches as future Jin - that way I am shaping and maturing together making best use of next few years.

tht, or n the garden. What you prefer. I prefer to not water plants that are just growing out

Have a small garden and a wife that objects to a patio full of project trees so I go for a mix - some hidden in borders (first pic has two silver birch and a sycamore, as well as the willow) and some camouflaged in plane sight as pot plants (second pic a trident and a young dawn redwood)...