Container sizes for nursery plants is simply confusing. There is a government agency(ANSI) that worked with the American Nursery and Landscape Association to publish a 129-page guide on containers sizes for nursery plants. In the smaller size containers #1-10, the allowable sizes of these containers can vary up to 50%. When we also call a #1 container a one-gallon container and it would by no means hold a gallon of milk, we continue the confusion.
When this confusion results in the buyer being disappointed with the plant size they expected to receive, this becomes a real problem for customers who are buying their plants online. I have added some pictures below to give a general idea about the size of nursery containers based on common house hold items that we gauge with volume.
At Rhododendrons Direct and More, we are a little different in that we sell our plants by the foliage top, rather than the container size, but we do like to reference the typical size container the foliage spread in which it would be found. For more information on foliage spread, click here.
