Buying plants in 9cm or 2 litre pot size?

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New completely empty bed. Everything I like is only available in 9cm pots. Should I wait until bigger sizes available or just get smaller?

Where are you looking to buy from? Sounds as though you're looking online? I've found that If you can find specific varieties in smaller, independent nurseries online they might be a bit more expensive but imho they're often better and will have the larger sizes in stock. 9cm is tiny for lots of things and it can take 5 years or so before they are a decent size. Also worth checking out local garden centres and nurseries which don't have their plant stock online. I bought some 2L sweet box plants online and needed more than they had in stock. The local Dobbies garden centre had the same size pot for a couple of pounds more, but they were significantly bigger plants and I was kicking myself for not going there first.

What is it your looking at? Prices go up a lot with bigger pots

Things like Verbena, Echinacea...

Very easy to grow from seeds for tiniest fraction of the price

I’m not going that small. Want plants, I never do well with seeds. How quick would 9cm grow in size?

I’ve just bought a load of teeny tiny plug plants. They grow quickly.

Grew verbena from tiny plugs last year and they only took a short while to get to full size

i always buy the smaller size because they are cheaper. the big ones are more likely to be pot-bound & don't take well to being moved.

Ah - I was thinking of shrubs rather than perennials.

If the plants are a good size in the larger pots you can sometimes divide them and get 2-3 plants out of one large one?

Are they plants which may suffer with frost? I sometimes buy slightly bigger acer plants because I've lost a few of the smaller ones to frost over the years. The slightly bigger plants seem to be more robust.

The grow quickly, but you might want to cosset them by planting into larger pots in the first instance and putting where you can keep an eye on them.

Watch out that they don't just put plants the same size into a much bigger pot and charge more for the privilege.

The advice often given is to plant in groups of 3 or 5, so your 9cm pots would soon fill their space.