I actually managed to put it all together last night so missed some of your replies but thanks... it was now or never as I didn't have the space to keep them in their individual pots again this season.
I few things i noted:
1. I cut a piece of cardboard out the same size as the pot and drew two designs on either side just in case the trunks lent themselves to
one or the other design.
2. I then drew the same design on the inside of the pot with a pencil. When I was doing this I forgot about the pot front and ended up with the drip at the front (whoops) I’ll have to change it when I repot in two or three years’ time.
3. I bare rooted all the trees before I started. The nebari spreads on the trees I grew where a little bit too wide so it made it hard to get them really close to each other when planting.
4. I put the trees roughly in the pot first so I could get an idea of the best composition and tree pairings/grouping combinations and you can also see which sides of each trees root balls you will need to cut back hard so you can place them closer together.
5. I started by mounding up dry akadama but it didn’t hold the trees in place that well so I ‘watered’ the hole bag, the wet akadama held them much better.
6. In each little group I tried to put the main tree in last so it was the highest in each ‘mini group’
7. I tried to make sure you could see all the trunks and that they had varying spaces between them this took a bit of tweaking
8. I used some wire to hold the tops in place once I had put all the trees in position.
9. I put a little bit more soil on top to protect the roots a little, when I get time I’ll apply moss. I’ll uncover the nebari’s a little bit more in the next repotting.
10. The main centre tree and its child which I cut back (it’s a twin trunk) will be left to grow to thicken up a little more. Once I know the other trees are healthy I’ll cut them back to size as well and start building apexes and braches etc.
I was aiming for something in between these two:
The mirror image of this: