The last two years since the pandemic, gardening has expanded a lot in this country. You can see that in stores when you find lots of empty seed slots in the seed racks late in the spring. The era of fifty percent off seed sales in the catalogs in January are over.
Buying seed is part of your planning for next summer. Planning well can reduce buying too much seed.
Flowers come from either seed or bulbs if you start them yourselves. Seed is much cheaper so you can plant them a bit thicker. This reduces empty gaps. Taller flowers, two to three feet tall, like asters, zinnias and tall marigolds, or whatever your favorites are, actually stand better when planted thicker because they lean on each other. If they do not all grow, or if they do not grow as well as you wanted them to, when they are a little thicker you will still get so many blooms that everyone will think you are a great gardener even if you did not realize that you are yourself. When they are thicker you also cover the ground so you catch all of the sun to make as many blooms as possible. The smaller plants, like petunias and pansies, work well in the front row.
Do not plant tomatoes too thick because they need air movement, so they do not get moldy. Two and a half to three feet apart is good. Also, not being next to a fence helps them get airflow. Planting basil next to tomatoes is good both to keep the bugs away and for flavoring when cooking tomatoes. Since basil is shorter they need to be planted on the sunny side of the tomatoes to grow well.
Planting $5 to $30 flower bulbs may be beautiful but very expensive. I have found that if I wait till June 10, when they should have been planted already, the nursery companies may put on a sale of five for $10, which is really cheap. They will not bloom very long this year, but the bulb will last either in the ground or your basement and you will have the type you want and planted early enough next year.