Get together for a great big bulb dig in, and how to reuse planters

In the neighbourhood

Not spoken to your neighbours in a while? Those community-minded folks at the Eden Project want to rectify that. They've teamed up with the Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Centre to launch the Big Bulb Plant, encouraging communities to plant improvised containers and verges, and generally brighten up the 'hood. The first 100 communities to register get 250 free bulbs. It's not just a ruse to sell more bulbs. Oh no. thebigbulbplant.com.

Marina Hyde brings you thrilling developments on The Mistress, the debut novel from Martine McCutcheon

Exciting news. It somehow always felt like there would be, but there are already thrilling developments on The Mistress, the debut novel from acting's Martine McCutcheon.

One, it's only going to be part of a trilogy!

The X Factor overlord's bizarre letter to himself

On the north shore of Long Island in the 1920s of F Scott Fitzgerald's imagination, impossibly glamorous guests would descend upon a mansion to attend the gilded parties of a man whom they did not really know, but to whom they had attached quasi- mythical cultural status. Tomorrow night, another party will be held at a country pile, though this one will merely have a 20s theme. It will take place near Barnet in Hertfordshire; it will be attended by the likes of Philip Green and Sinitta, and it will celebrate the 50th birthday of Simon Cowell.