Hi, from the Maritimes (formerly Ont). You said "to be planted outside" - do you mean in the ground? For life or for initial training as a bonsai? In fact, are you absolutely sure what a bonsai is? Essentially any tree that normally grows in your area could be used, though ones that naturally have smaller leaves to begin with are better choices, and conifers are good too, of course, but some of them (pines) may be harder for newbies to work with. Can you write back and answer my first question and then we can go from there. There are trees, e.g. poplars and others that don't make great bonsai, and not all junipers are hardy in Sask.

You might consider Hemlock.

'Niwaki' is a term for landscape trees/plants that are trained with bonsai techniques.
Maybe this is something you'd like to try.

Josh

Hi larke, thank you for the reply. No I am not 100% sure what the term bonsai means. I was planing on planting this tree outside in the ground like a regular tree but manipulating the growth with wire and pruning to acheive the "bonsai" look.

If I am missing something please let me know. I have never done anything like this as I'm sure you can already tell.

Colby

Hi, well bonsai literally means 'tree in a pot', though as Josh said one can train a tree in the ground to some extent, but it's not a bonsai (have you never seen the original Karate Kid movie? So many people got turned on by the bonsai being taken care of by the sensei (teacher), though all it really showed was him doing a little trimming. There are many ways to grow a tree so it can live in a pot for a very long time, but it takes time to learn the techniques and just how to keep the trees alive for any length of time because each species has different needs, the majority of them have to live outdoors for life (though not in the ground except for a few years initially to speed up trunk thickening) to be able to go through cold dormancy in the winter. That applies, of course, to most of us in climate zones where they grow naturally. However, tropicals can be grown indoors, though most often with the help of supplementary lighting, special set-ups for humidification (a spray a day does nothing for any plant) and very careful attention to watering correctly. Bonsai cannot be grown in the same way as house plants... plop in a pot, water weekly and trim on occasion - they won't survive very long at all without knowledgable care. A misconception people often have is that the trees are special type called 'bonsai', but in fact they're just regular trees that are grown and trained to look interesting and (usually) old, which is why fat trunks are important to most styles (though not all), but rather than waiting decades for them to be large, you'd take a 3-5 (or often more) year old tree with a decent trunk and then 'chop' it back to be very short, grow new smaller branches, and have the illusion of an ancient tree! There are schools of thought that more closely follow traditional Japanese styles, which are quite formal, and others (not as many) that like the Chinese 'penjing' which tend to be more landscape creations (large interesting rock in a shallow tray with tiny pines hanging off the sides, and maybe a tiny figure of a fisherman (called 'mudmen') or whooping crane down below. Bonsai actually originated in China thousands of years ago. Today, especially in the west (Europe included) many people are growing in more naturalistic styles, still training their trees, but not in such formalized styles that follow some rather rigid rules. People also often say that bonsai are 'tortured' to become what they are, but in fact it's nonsense because they get treated like royalty in all respects (when done right :-) and easily outlive their in-ground relatives by many years if things are done right.
You will see scads of what we call mall-sai in places like Wal-Mart, etc., tons of Chinese elms and Junipers (really just 3-5 yr old cuttings) stuffed into tiny pots (we only do that once they're developed into bonsai, but no one told the people selling them by the gazillion - imported from China and all trained in the same unnatural "s" shape or similar styles) and they all have the same utterly useless and often worse 'care tags' on them... please ignore as you don't want to end up with those, at least not until you know what you're doing and choose to do it because they're cheap. Good bonsai (some are 3-4' high and as wide across, though most are smaller, and some truly tiny) are grown from (mostly) nursery stock, cheap but healthy and more developed. I also strongly suggest you do a lot of reading before running out to buy anything because even a week in 'ignorant' hands (nothing personal :-) can be the end of a tree. Online places to read basics are bonsai4me.com, evergreengardenworks.com (mostly for conifers) and bonsaihunk.us/cultural.html for tropicals. On the website Bonsaisite.com there's a subforum of book reviews which is also a good place to start, and the best place of all to learn - because you see how things are done first hand and terms (which in books can be confusing) explained. You don't really want to hear more right now do you? I get a bit carried away sometimes!

Second to last para... 'best place of all to learn' would be a local club (though bonsaisite is nice, but not hands-on). Sorry!

A good way to start, is to go out in your yard, or the forest, and find a seedling. Dig it up, and trim the taproot - this is important to encourage a fibrous root system. Then plant it in a small pot - not a bonsai pot but just a small pot. Repot every year for the first few years, trimming the roots each time, and pinch the topgrowth to encourage ramification. This is an extreme simplification of the pinch-and-grow technique, and it takes many years to become what people would consider a "bonsai", but to me the joy is in the doing, that is, to "create" a bonsai rather than just to "have" one. I have many trees in my collection that I've grown this way, and they're the most valuable to me because they're my own and I've known them their entire lives, not just something I bought from someone and turned into a bonsai, not knowing its true age.

That's really not a good way to start at all - digging things up. And taproots only apply to a very few trees to begin with, but the problem is the time of year, which is very important, and one would normally only prune roots or major branches in early spring, just before buds open. Now would be a very bad time of year to do that. It's very nice to know a tree from early on, but there are right ways to do things as a newbie, and digging a seedling is not one of them.