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Now that winter finally looks and feels like a proper winter (it does as I write this on a snowy Saturday anyhow, but I can’t speak for the day this hits your mailbox), I am in danger of sliding down a slippery slope toward spring. I’ve started going through seed catalogs.

I suspect that most gardeners buy their vegetables as seeds but there is a whole wide world of ornamental annuals and perennials worth sowing, too. Starting flowers from seed is every bit as easy (or as difficult) as starting vegetables, just as economical and ultimately gratifying. If flowers aren’t your thing it’s worth remembering that ornament is important. Sexy flowers seduce the pollinators to visit and stick around to work the squash.

Right now, it’s the catalog pictures of flowers that are seducing me. Select Seeds is the only seed company I know that offers more flowers than vegetables. They have seemingly endless varieties of poppies, nicotiana, cosmos, 4 o’clocks and nasturtiums, and whenever they label something “rare!” I have to have it. They also sell plants of some of their more difficult-to-grow-from-seed varieties. Those will arrive carefully boxed just in time for planting outside.

I must be going through a nesting phase (winter does that to me) because I want decorative seed packets almost as much as I want what’s inside them. Select Seeds’ packets are informative but very plain-Jane. Renee’s Garden and Botanical Interests’ seed packets on the other hand, have prettily realistic watercolors and colored-pencil drawings of the contents along with a backside full of sowing instructions and good-to-know information including plant size at maturity, spacing needs, soil and light requirements.

Hands down the prettiest seed packages of all are the “art packs” sold by the Hudson Valley Seed Library. This five-year-old company run by a pair of 30-somethings lends locally sourced seeds to members (in hopes of getting seeds returned after successful harvest) and sells seeds to you and me. According to their website (www.seedlibrary.org) they “value organic growing methods, local seed production, and celebrating the union of the creative arts with agriculture.”

It was a stroke of pure genius to commission local artists to embellish packages for a choice selection of seeds. Each is completely unique, totally funky and framable. I’m as helpless to resist their moonflower packet as a luna moth is helpless to resist the flower itself, and I’m not sure where I’ll plant the State Fair Zinnia seeds I bought. Who knew art and agriculture could be so happily married?

I’m anxious for my orders to arrive not just because I want some new wall decor but because some of the seeds, varieties of favorite self-sowers, plants like columbine, nicotiana, poppies and alyssum, can be started any time now, even in the snow. It’s safe to presume that plants that willingly seed themselves in our climate need to go through winter’s freeze and thaw cycles, called stratification in the botany books, before breaking dormancy and germinating. Or at the very least they often need to be faked out.

Some people use the refrigerator for that, placing seeds sandwiched between damp paper towels inside resealable bags in the meat drawer. I think it’s easier to use the garden. The plants I mentioned above have very small seeds that might go unnoticed by birds and squirrels, but it would still be safer to broadcast them as the snow is melting. Take care to aim over a vacant patch of garden if you can remember where those are and expect some serendipitous drifting.

Sow bigger, bird-tempting seeds, like echinacea and butterfly weed, in seed starter potting mix in packs — plastic salad boxes with holes punched for drainage work in a thrifty pinch. Place them outside covered securely in window screen to keep everybody but the snow and rain out.

Once we start in the garden, even this early shopping and dreaming phase, it’s hard to stop. No doubt I will order and start more seeds than I can possibly fit in this already packed garden. But it’s a slippery slope to the addiction of spring and I’m enjoying the ride.

Kristin Green is the interpretive horticulturist at Blithewold Mansion, Gardens & Arboretum in Bristol. She has worked at Blithewold since 2003 and has written their garden blog (blog.blithewold.org) since 2007.