I have some azaleas, a boxwood and two Japanese hollies.. I've never wired any of them. I've used guide wires on the Japanese Holly. And so far I've just been using the clip and grow method. Just wondering if anybody had any tips, tricks or suggestions for this method or especillay for any of these species. Any input would be helpful! Cheers!

Clip and grow is they way it was done always. Now we have wire. Depending on species you can use wire. I don't like to use wire on deciduous trees if I can avoid it. Marks on the branches are almost impossible to grow out. The Japanese Holly is quite brittle and wiring is not a good idea. I know to my cost. Clip and grow is probably the best way to train and style, but it is also slower and too many growers want instant.
I use both ways on my trees and whilst I wire my conifer when needed, I only wire deciduous if I must. Timing is also critical, wiring deciduous in spring is out. Autumn would be ok, so it does depend on the species.

Okay, thanks for the feedback man. I totally agree with you on all that. The jap holly is way too brittle, so is all the foliage.. It would be such a pain to try and wire it so I'm using guy wires for now to bend down some branches for appearence of age and to help make "pads" but clip and grow seems to be working well. I can wire certain branches on my azaleas but not all of them and I've already snapped a branch a while back (thank god it survived! Held it back together with wire but scared to take it off hahaha) I think I'll just clip and grow on the azaleas throughout the seasons and see how they come out!! preciate the input.