English Translation
Tom is growing a beard.
What is the advantage of saying “Tom lässt sich einen Bart wachsen” over
“Tom wächst ein Bart”.
English “to grow” can be both transitive and intransitive, but german “wachsen” is always intransitive (except when you mean the other, identical looking (in the infinitive) verb that means “to wax”).
So in german you can’t grow a beard, because it will always grow by itself. You can just let it grow.
There is another verb, “züchten”, that can be translated as “to grow something”, but its meaning is closer to “to breed” if it’s about animals, or “to cultivate” when it’s about plants or bacteria.
So you wouldn’t use it for a beard.
Your proposed sentence is valid german, if you interpret “Tom” as dative: “Ihm wächst ein Bart” - “A beard is growing on Tom”. But that of course changes the meaning.
If “wachsen” would be allowed to take an object, then it would be “einen Bart”, because it would be accusative.
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Thank you for this comprehensive comment. I get it now. I am always forgetting the German language obsession with categorising verbs into transitive and intransitive and objects into direct and indirect.
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