I'm new to bonsai, but I thought I'd give it a try with some cheap/free materials. I went out to the beach and pulled a few Australian Pine saplings out of the ground. Most of them had a very long taproot, but one had only roots that went out to the side, and not down (must have been right on top of concrete). I shaped it a bit, washed the roots of soil and put it in a shallow pot with perlite as the medium. It has been living for almost 2 months, and growing happily. I think it will make a fine specimen as long as it gets enough sun and water. Since they're a legume, they have nitrogen fixing bacteria on the roots, and can live in very poor soil. I still fertilize once every week or 2 though. How well do you guys think this will work? I thought that since they're so invasive here, it'd be easy to get one to grow, and since they grow so fast, it'll make a nice specimen quite quickly.