The cultivar is described as "dwarf, dense and compact" and will have a growth rate of 6 inches per year or less. As a 'true' dwarf, it could be a lot less. Growth rate typically refers to vertical extension - height - not spread. There is not necessarily a direct correlation between age and width. In fact, canopy width or spread rarely has much significance until the plant is considered mature, which it is not anywhere close to at only 5-6 years.

I'm not sure how reasonable it is to compare to the Monrovia product unless it is the same cultivar. There are scads of different mugo cultivars on the market and different cultivars will grow at different rates and to different sizes so you may very well be comparing apples and oranges.

Those are fine specimens and definitely are at least the age as claimed. What one must factor in is that most plants start out rather slow in their first few years and only really begin to establish themselves in their third season, these again are very nice full and well grown plants that I'd be very happy with for myself! Also, yes, as Gardengal says, some varieties do grow at much different rates and one can really only compare identical ones side by side and some are just more expensive than others as well.

@FrozeBudd_z3/4 Would you be happy paying $160 for each one of these plants? I think I got sold a four-year-old plant as a five to six-year-old plant, probably because the grower was sold out. I think the price should reflect what I was shipped rather than what was advertised.

Ooohhh, now that does change things, no I would not be pleased with that price that's for sure, I had presumed you dished out nothing near that sum! About four years ago, I came across some nice specimens of mugo 'Sherwood Compact' and kicked myself I hadn't snagged one at the $40.00 something Canadian they had been, these are not easy to come upon in my location and now prices have much rather increased.

westes, I'm guessing you had these shipped to your home without realizing the total cost. Yes they look real nice but that is expensive. Do you have the breakdown between trees and shipping?
If no shipping was that an installed price?

@alley_cat_gw_7b The cost was $160 PER TREE without counting the shipping costs. The basic plant was somewhere around $40 to $60, and the plants that were five to six years old were much more expensive. I ordered a mature plant, and for the very high price I wanted a mature plant. It made things much worse that this company never responded to any inquiry - through email or through their contact form - in advance of my paying money for the order.

i cant quite tell if they are a seed strain or grafted ...

no seed grown dwarf mugo would be your dream size in 5 to 6 years ... they would probably look like about what you got.. short of hyperfertilization ...

and no grafted tree would be that big either ...

tree time.. decades.. blah.. blah.. blah ... large enough root mass to become fully established ... blah.. blah.. blah ... lol...

i think your expectation were a bit high ...

that said.. the price is astounding ... but i havent been in the market for years.. so im not sure how out of line it is ...

it is a pine... i would think you should be able to count annual whorls to count back in time ... though its been a very long time since i stuck my head in a mugo .. or tried counting whorls on such . if its even possible ...

refer to method 2: https://www.wikihow.com/Determine-the-Age-of-a-Tree

ken

@ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5 These are "TruDwarf" cloned plants. I believe they grow them from cuttings of the parent, to guarantee a true clone. It is definitely not seed, and I do not believe there is any grafting.

@alley_cat_gw_7b The whole thing was just a disaster from the start. The reseller is Kigi Nursery, a reseller of the grower. This company never answered a single question I sent them in advance. Kigi is apparently too busy to either publish a phone number or answer questions before orders are placed. There is no phone number on the Contact Us page. No question sent by the Contact form was ever answered. No attempt to contact by email was ever answered. I even contacted the grower - whose job is not to answer questions for their reseller - and I begged them to get the reseller to contact me. The grower said they would pass the message and Kigi still did not contact me. All of these problems could have been avoided by just giving me the plant size before I placed an order.

After I placed an order, the shipment date was missed and I asked about that by messaging in their order system, and that was ignored too.

The first and only time Kigi nursery answered any question was when I complained about what I received. Now that I have the plants I am able to contact other resellers who claim to have three year old two-gallon plants that are identical size to what I received, and their price is $49, not $160. So the facts just do not add together. Kigi insists I received a five to six-year-old plant, but that plant is the identical size and appearance to what other resellers are selling as three-year-old plants.

So I am angry because the company has no customer service at all, and they in fact sold me something at three times what its actual market price was. And the plant is smaller than what I wanted on top of that. Definitely, I will never do business with Kigi Nursery again, and anyone who is not local to them should probably find someone who has time to answer questions before ordering.

They have many negative reviews on Dave's Garden's Watchdog List. Poor customer service is specifically mentioned repeatedly.

@Sara Malone Zone 9b It is good to know about that part of Dave's Garden and I bookmarked it. The negative comments there match my report. The company has a major customer service problem and needs to hire an employee who likes dealing with customers.

yeah and someone on a Facebook conifer group is complaining about the nursery, too. The comments from other group members are about split between negative and positive.