Here's my Boxwood that I saved from the landfill! What should I do with it?

Take proper care of it, but leave it alone, do not cut, prune, wire, and hope that it recovers.

This plant should not have been put in a bonsai pot yet.

GingerBonsai wrote: Here's my Boxwood that I saved from the landfill! What should I do with it?

Collected from the outside, should have gone to a nursery pot, or some big container to adapt to live in a container for at least 2 years., or until healthy. Anyway. Boxwood are strong, and it still might survive. Leave it outside and take care of it. You have a big reverse tapper problem there. I am not sure how you are fixing that, but that's a problem you are going to have to deal with in the future. I don't think this box is good bonsai start material, but if you want to try, maybe you can try air-layering(not sure if this works with box). Or chopping the trunk and making a really tiny Shohin. Anyway, this is years from now. If you are going to chop the trunk off, you will need the tree to put some very low growth (create a branch very close to the base of the trunk) so chances of survival after chopping are higher. You also need a very strong, and well adapted root mass system, which is going to take a while.

I also notice you severely pruned the plant. Which was another big mistake. Collected, re-potted on a bonsai pot, and heavily pruned it. Also looks like you attempted to do some partial defoliation, which works great on HEALTHY boxwoods. If the plant survives all of this, it will take a long long time to recover. Having a few boxwoods myself, I can already see the plant is showing early signs of death.

good luck, and by the way. Been there, done that. We all have... it is part of the learning curve.

Thanks for your help with this.
I found it in a skip near my house.
I only removed the dead foliage etc.
I'll put it into a large pot and put it back outside.
It was better than letting it go to landfill or the shredder.

It's going to take some time Ginger to recover and become better material. I am so glad to see you are still active in learning bonsai. The base of the trunk will need to thinker up some to make up for the reverse taper. It looks like the reverse taper was caused by a cluster of branches right in the center. Don't worry it will grow out.