91Èȱ¬

In the news...
After the gloom of last year's disastrous fall in garden bird numbers you'd be forgiven for being a tad apprehensive about the .

In fact, it's , with goldcrests, and coal tits significantly up in numbers - confounding predictions these tiny birds would suffer in this winter's freeze.

The says the surprising results are down to an exceptionally good breeding season in 2010, boosting numbers enough for populations to survive a second hard winter.

Did you get taken in? This year's green-fingered April Fools included the ; and a . Funny how monsters in Wiltshire bear an uncanny resemblance to ...

And I thought there was some April foolery involved in rumours that the played Mozart to an audience of 100 plants and bulbs at Cadogan Hall in London – until I realised it happened a week ago.

There's a serious point (well, sort of): they were apparently testing whether sonic vibrations such as music, or the human voice, really does affect the growth of plants.

Elsewhere on the web...
Viewers in Scotland will be looking forward to a new season at on Monday; this week they're assessing the damage after another blisteringly cold winter and celebrating spring at the lovely gardens at , on the west coast, and the snowdrop-laden in Fife.

Chickens are continuing their gradual takeover of the nation's gardens: last week Gardeners' Question Time, this week and city back yards in Natalie Haynes's highly entertaining Radio 4 programmeÌýAttila the Hen.

There were chickens called Spiderman and Batman, feral chickens living on a roundabout in the middle of the A143Ìýin Suffolk, and - more ominously – a chicken-vandalised former veg garden. Now that's going too far.

This week's best read: garden writer Noel Kingsbury in a : time we stopped being romantic about food production, he argues.

And unmissable listen of the week has be Elegies from a Suburban Garden on 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4: a paean to a gardener's romanticism if there ever was one.

Out and about...
Gardening mums everywhere can take it easy tomorrow and treat themselves to a cuppa and a cake – preferably in the tearooms of some gorgeous garden. And there's plenty of Mothering Sunday pampering to be had.

A slap-up lunch is on offer at in Essex, in Oxfordshire, and the queen of them all, in Kent (where there's a free bunch of daffs at the gate for mums, too).

Scrumptious cream teas can be had alongside the spring flowers at in Rutland, one of several gardens offering free entry for mums on Mother's Day; and at the in Windsor Park – also free for mums - you can really feel like a Queen with carriage rides around the gardens.

This year's show season opens with a bang this week: the much-anticipated starts on Friday and promises a weekend of daffodil-sprinkled delights. There are show gardens, a , spring flowers galore and a record 75 flower-filled wheelbarrows made by schoolchildren from around the region, the winner picked by public vote.Ìý