You want the best quality of seed, and moreover, you want selections that will grow well in your garden, and give you results that please you. The Seed Encyclopedia section of this website describes almost every plant that is available from seed, and a little time spent studying it might be very helpful to you. You can decide which plants will give you the bloom time, height, color, or vegetable yield you want, and you can check the Side panel links to determine which plants will grow well in the particular conditions in your garden, whether it is sun, shade, moist, or dry.

You are investing a lot of time and effort into your growing venture, so I recommend you always buy the best quality seed from reliable seeds-men (or women!) to help ensure your success. Their seed will be true to the name on the packet, free of weeds or inert material, and as free of disease as possible. They will also be fresh and have a high percentage of germination for that variety. They are carefully graded to keep quality high, harvested at maturity, collected properly, and cleaned, processed and stored in the most technically advanced ways to ensure that you get the best quality (and thus results) possible.

Of course, it is possible, and often fun, to collect seed from your or your friends’ flower gardens, but you should not expect them to perform with the reliability of purchased seed. They probably will differ significantly from the parent plants, and the germination rate will vary quite a bit, depending on storage conditions, cleaning of the seed, and whether or not the seed were harvested at the optimal time.