There’s a bug going around. A virus as common as a cold and as unsettling as the flu, though much less disgusting and debilitating. Its symptoms include distraction, free-range anxiety, sleeplessness, increased appetite, and for me, a slightly runny nose that may or may not be related. Not many infections will propel its host off the couch to make hay while the sun shines, or more to the point, dig in a garden, one but this one does. Spring fever is highly contagious and I’ve caught it big time. Almost worse than ever. You too?

For anyone without a garden, spring fever will compel you to plant one from scratch starting yesterday. For those of us with full-to-bursting gardens, the fever will twist our arms to increase our garden areas (reducing the size of the lawn if necessary—do it!) and add all kinds of new plants including, but not limited to, exotic zone-pushing experiments and natives we’ve never seen in the wild, as well as seed annuals that want to be started now under lights, and ten new dahlia cultivars. Spring fever deals a blow in the form of a fresh start.

This affliction might be the death of us (someday, a long way off) but it’s part of our process. Change isn’t just good, it’s absolutely necessary. There’s no such thing as a garden – or even a landscape – that’s the same from one year to the next, and we might as well be intentional and active participants. Now’s the time to make the adjustments you’ve been up nights thinking about.

The first step before introducing new plants is to make room for them. Which means out with the disappointments. Out with plants that failed to thrive, didn’t bloom when or as long as you might have liked, or otherwise didn’t live up to the hype. Get them out before they start growing by leaps and you lose your resolve. They had their chance.

Out with the extras too: the overgrowth that has gone a titch too far and the 1000 surplus seedlings you don’t need. Hold onto just enough of your favorites that they’ll remain favorites. Out with anything that exceeds your physical limits to control. (A gardener’s limits are constantly changing.) Get rid of invasive species or die trying. They’re a constant battle; always ask for help.

Except for invasive species, which should go straight onto the burn pile, offer your rejects and extras to friends before composting them. You never know what will make another gardener’s heart go pitterpat. And expect your friends to return the favor. (Just try to say, “no, thank you.”)

Along with adding some plants I’ve never met before (I am grateful to a very generous friend), spring fever will drive me to move favorites around into new combinations. Following advice offered in a Garden Rant blog article about small-garden design by Susan Harris, I will focus on textural contrasts between plants. Harris’s interviewee, Thomas Rainer, a DC landscape architect and co-author of "Planting in a Post-Wild World" suggested that exaggerated differences and clearly visible layers (imagine your garden in black and white, he says) will create the feeling of depth and space. I want that.

My plan is to reunite divisions previously employed as repeating elements and try them as larger blocks of texture and color instead. Come summer, I’ll probably add a dahlia or ten. I’ll find places for tender-perennial late-summer bloomers, add a few more natives, and some six packs of seed annuals. And it will be good because it will be a change. But I have no doubt, this time next year, give or take a few weeks, I’ll be in a fever to change it up all over again.

Kristin Green is a Bristol-based gardener and author of 'Plantiful: Start Small, Grow Big with 150 Plants that Spread, Self-Sow, and Overwinter'. Follow her blog at trenchmanicure.com.