AusBonsai

Any idea?

Got a clear close up of the foliage?

I think it is a juniper but even with close up of foliage we can probably only narrow it down to a few possibilities. Definitive ID of conifers is quite difficult because there are so many species that are similar, so many varieties that look different from the original species and so many that have ben mislabelled and misnamed in the nursery industry over the past 80 years or more.

A definitive ID doesn't really matter. It will be suitable for bonsai but the foliage is a little bit sparser and might be difficult to get the nice compact foliage pads we see on shimpaku.

Almost definitely some kind of juniper, there are hundreds of these juniper X media varieties.. Do you have permission to dig it?

Adam

I dug it up this afternoon. I had to remove a fair few mature roots but kept a lot of green. I also snapped one of the trunks while jacking it out of the ground...

What an amateur.

Fingers crossed it recovers. Fingers crossed I recover - I'm pretty sore.

Here is a close up of the foliage.