well these are not going to be true bonsai. let me clarify this a bit cause i think my initial explanation may have been confuseing. the plants are goi9ng to be in raised flower beds borderd with cement retaining walls, the on differance being that all the soil and every thing is conatien with in the limits of the pond liner so that all water that gravity pulls down through the beds is returned in to the pond system. to clarify this another step. in a natural pond setting or yas river area..... you have a high water table that is exposed to the surface in a low area, the open body of water( this is not always the case as you may have water that is conatined in a rout in a heavy clay soil and may not pass out into the surrounding ground. what im doing is creating an artifical water table with all the plant beds over that table. plants then have the option of extending their roots down int o the water table if their water requirements are more then what the current water situation is. the only plants i plan to dwarf are the mugo pine and the cypress and that will probaly be done through, pruneing. i do intend to prune the plants into desirable shapes but this is on a much larger scale then a normal bonsai would be.the wisteira wichis curently about 5 years old i believe it was 4 years onld when i bought it in the summer, will be trained up a hollowed out log that is about 6 feet tall,and will provide support for the wisteria wich will be trained to banch out over the top of the log like a tree, and alowed to spread out to about a 12 foot radius. the mugo and the cypress are the only things ill have to keep small, the mugo to maybe 3 or 4 feet depending on how it looks in proportion to the water falls it will be placed between, and i would like to keep the cypress to about no more than 7 feet. the cypress willbe lowed to get its toes wet while keepingits anlkes dry. the pther plants the rose of sharon the mugo and the wisteria i have decided to run on a differnt system. since i have to be able to remove plant material that floats downinto my skimer part of the pond, which until now has been leftto just detiorate, i have decided to put in a settleing tank that this material will fall into and be pumped out useing a trash pump. ok heres the trick. ill use a timer to pump water for about 30 miniuts to an hour once a week. wich is waht we would normaly recomend for watering trees during the growing season that are planted out side in the ground, wich is basical what these plants will be. i might have to reduce the watering time because there is a smaller area for the plant to be growing. when the plants are watered the pump will act like a garbage disposal, sucking up and chewing up any material that has settled in the tank( possibly even some fish who have gotten too curious and decided to swim over the falls, the fish have gone over the falls a couple of times) and way this material will be ejected on to the surface around the maple, wisteria, mugo and rose of sharon wich will accumilate into a nice loam. note: this will oly happen when the pond is awake i.e. in december when the water goes below 50 degrees farenhit the pondis put to sleep meaning the pumps are shut off till around march or april when the water gets back up to 50 or basicaly duriing the growing season. also since the plants are over a water table if they need more water then they are getting with the weakly watering they can grow their roots down to the water and absorb it from the water table wich is a natural thing for them to do. the whole concept of the pond is to keep it low maintance with the exceptin of occasional pruning to control size and shape of some of the plants

The largest cypress I've ever visited was the late, great Senator Cypress in Sanford, FL. It caught on fire and burned down some years ago. The story about how the fire started absolutely infuriates me and I won't go into it here. Volume should be the measuring stick for the conifers. In terms of volume, the Senator clearly exceeded the other well known bald cypresses in the South, including the Tennessee Titan. I have up close up photos of the Titan and have no doubt about this. The Titan was still a wonderful tree. The Cat Island, LA trees, which I have visited numerous times, are indeed huge at the base with a very quick taper. IMO, there are several cypress trees at Cat Island that are more impressive than the national champ, which I still suspect is two trees grown together, despite DNA evidence that apparently suggests otherwise. One of my favorite cypresses for form is the former Mississippi champion at Sky Lake WMA in west central Mississippi. The current Mississippi champion is located within 100 yards of the former champion. I have not visited the Arkansas champ yet, but from the photos I have it looks very impressive for form.

I agree that for the most part, what trees you like are a matter of taste. That said, there are some trees that, while having some nice ornamental properties are highly invasive. Chinaberry, Ligustrum and Chinese Tallow (another "evil" one) are extremely invasive around here, displacing native species. I think most of us can agree that's a bad thing. I also agree with Lou that over planting any variety of tree, native or not can be a bad thing. Ask anyone in the northern part of the country where American Elm was the dominant boulevard tree if a little more variety wouldn't have been nice when the majority of them succumbed to Dutch Elm disease in the 80's. Like the Live Oak around here, it was a quality, native tree that was just over-used. I hope our neighborhood never experiences Oak Wilt since the builder planted Live Oaks almost exclusively and they are mostly now 20' to 30' trees, along with some mature ones that were preserved. I'm seeing Monterrey Oaks planted more and more, which I find encouraging as they are supposed to be wilt resistant and are also evergreen or nearly so. Bug-the reason I dislike AZ Ash, above all else, is the root system. We have a neighbor that has one on the west side of their house that's about 25' tall, so it's giving off nice shade. The problem is the roots are on top of the ground everywhere, including large ones pushing up against their foundation. I can't see that situation getting any better... If in doubt, go over to Dave's Garden and check out some of the pictures and reviews of AZ Ash. I think if TX Ash was more widely available and it was more well known it would help. People are going to keep planting AZ Ash and its cultivars if nurseries and the big boxes keep selling them. After all, they wouldn't be selling it if it was a "trash" tree, would they? ;^)

I also have both plants in my garden. The bald cypress had a rough summer (hot and dry here outside Atlanta) and has already lost most of its leaves. The ones which remain, however, are green. My dawn redwood survived the summer completely unscathed; it remains fully leafed-out without any fall color, yet. But I typically don't see the colors change until the end of October/beginning of November.