It’s time to get online or call up your favorite mail order companies and order those flowers you’ve always dreamed of! January is National Mail Order Gardening Month, the perfect time of year to plan your perfect garden and start setting the plans for it in motion. Almost 40% of the households in the United States planted vegetable gardens in 2009, which is both a pleasant pastime as well as an excellent source of cheap, fresh food. In fact, if you want to eat locally and organically but don’t have the resources to buy fresh food all year, growing your own is a fantastic compromise.

Of course, if growing food isn’t your thing, you can plan a gorgeous plant garden. Perhaps you’ve always wanted a pretty butterfly garden around your mailbox or fence to attract the insects to your yard. Maybe water gardens are your cup of tea; if so, you might want to consider creating the barrel garden in Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots. The book has several other excellent gardening projects for children and families as well, such as creating sunflower tents.

One of the easiest ways to get a hold of a mail order company is to simply sign up for a catalog. Here you can find a big list of mail order gardening catalogs, from Burpee to Wilkerson Mill Gardens. There are also garden supply companies listed for those who need gardening utensils but don’t know where to start.

Of course, you can also look around at your local nurseries and see what they have to offer—which may be the more sustainable route. You’re also more likely to get natural, native plants that way, which will make your garden healthier for your neighborhood and its creatures. Even so, if you do get these catalogs in the mail you can cut out photos of the flowers you like and arrange them in collages to determine how you’d like your garden to look. Getting a good visual can help you decide what you ultimately wish to purchase.

If you’d like to skip the paper catalogs and try something online, Better Homes and Gardens has a cool interactive tool on its website that allows you to drag and drop items you’d like to have in your garden and see what it might look like. It’s free and also includes items like accents and structures so you can get an idea of what you want the whole garden to look like, not just the plants.