The National Gardening Bureau has a slogan - 'Great Gardeners Use Seed! ^TM', and you will indeed see seed-grown plants in the garden of pretty much anyone who deems gardening an important part of his/her life.  Why on earth is this?  For the practical-minded, growing from seed is the best value in gardening!  For the small cost of a few packets of seed, you can fill a garden with color.  If you bought the same number of plants already started in pots, you would have to pay easily ten times the price, and you wouldn't have the satisfaction of having created such beauty yourself.

Nothing makes you feel closer to the cycle of nature.  Growing from seed also provides a link with the past and a simpler way of life that many find satisfying.

For those who want their garden to be out of the ordinary, seeds offer a much wider selection to choose from.  No nursery or garden center stocks the numbers of flowers and vegetables that you will find when perusing seed catalogs, and seed are often the only way to obtain many rare or unusual plants.

For the health-conscious, growing from seed lets you control the total nutritional input into your plants, plus, many of the most vitamin- and mineral-rich varieties are not available anywhere but from seed companies.  The best way to access new varieties with increased disease resistance (and thus good performers without the use of manufactured chemicals) is typically from seed catalogs; many of these will not be available as plants for many years, if ever.

Some vegetables, like beans, corn, radishes and lettuce are so easy to grow from seed that there is no reason to grow them any other way.  And then, sowing seeds early yourself can give you a head start on harvesting or bloom time.  In short, there are many reasons to grow from seed, almost as many as there are gardeners!