The Gardeners' World Blog

We've just been having a look at the audience figures for this year's Six Nations - and the provisional statistics suggest it was another big hit with our audiences.

A total of 30.3m people in the UK - that's 54% of the entire population - saw some of the Six Nations on BBC television; and we had a great response too to our radio coverage and to our new media services - ranging from the live streaming and highlights on this website to the full match replays on the BBC iPlayer.

These major events are crucial for the BBC: they're part of our public service remit to bring the nation together for the biggest sporting events - and we were delighted last autumn to renew our contract with the Six Nations up to and including 2013. Last week, of course, we also revealed the return of F1 to the BBC portfolio with a pleasingly enthusiastic response on our blogs and message boards.

Today we have similarly good news about another of the UK's great sporting institutions - Wimbledon. We're announcing this afternoon that the BBC has secured a new five-year deal with the All England Club that guarantees Wimbledon will be on BBC television, radio and online through to 2014.