I have a Chinese Elm I got from Amazon (!). I kept it inside for a couple of months during with winter and it grew some runners. When the warm weather started to return, I moved it outside and cut off the runners. Here is what it looks like now:

It looks pretty scraggly, so I cut off all the foliage on the top and they are starting to bud:

It still looks woody.

My question: should I cut away the woody parts? If so, how severely? I am aiming for something like this:

I am also trying to grow seedlings and cuttings from my river birch. I have several pots with cuttings in them that I have just left under the birch as it dropped its seeds this year. There is a lot going on in this pot: . You can see the cuttings (very slow to deploy their leaves), the seedlings from last year and the seeds form this year.

I plan to just leave them out until winter and water them. If anyone sees anything else I should do, please let me know.