Cooking Mama surprised us all by being more fun than it had any right to be. Now Majesco is hoping to repeat the success by moving the action into the garden.

Yup, Gardening Mama, and it’s heading to Europe courtesy of 505 Games. It’s developed by the same team behind the Cooking Mama series too, which bodes very well for the white-hot trowel-based adventures in store. And there’ll be plenty of those, oh yes…

This time around your humble DS stylus stands in for all manner of garden implements as you prepare the ground, plant, water, fertilise and eventually harvest a range of colourful fruit, flowers n’ vegetables. All under the watchful tutelage of Mama herself, of course. Some of your bountiful crop can be turned into other items too - fruit into jam, pumpkins carved into Halloween lanterns and so on.

Gameplay is further extended with co-operative or combative multiplayer modes for up to four. After that there are various trinkets to decorate your plot - hanging baskets and the like, gnomes too if they’ve any sense. And should the mood take you can even change Mama’s outfits. Heck knows why you’d want to, though.

And that’s about all there is to know at present. Gardening Mama is released on Nintendo DS next spring - you dig?