While my father has a great gift for cultivating the most fragrant of roses in his garden, I’m afraid that I didn’t inherit his green fingers. I’m better with wild flowers. Well, weeds is probably the more accurate term. I do a great line in dandelions, it has to be said.

This spring, however, I decided to try flower farmer Maura Sheehy’s cutting-garden project in Irish Country Living and have been richly rewarded as a result. Despite the inclement weather, I’ve had the sunniest cosmos in shades of pink, wine and white, hardy cornflowers in the deepest blue, and the most entrancing star-shaped love-in-a-mist.

It has been such a pleasure to be able to pick a posy when calling to a friend’s house, or to be able to fill old jam jars and bottles otherwise destined for the recycling bin with blooms when having guests over for barbecues. It was also lovely to see how many more bees were buzzing around, getting their fill of nectar. Everybody was a winner.

In the final article in the current series, Maura shares some practical tips on how to best arrange your blooms to bring the outdoors indoors. If any readers would like to email photos of their own arrangements from their cutting garden, I would love to see them. I hope you enjoyed the project as much as I did and would like to thank Maura for so generously sharing her expertise over the last few months.

But if the rain keeps you out of the garden this week, there is plenty to enjoy in Irish Country Living. Sticking with a floral theme, our cover star this week is new kid on the block – or blog – Naomi Ní Chatháin, who bakes with foraged blooms and hedgerow bounties. We also chat to the Calvey sisters, who are bringing Achill Mountain Lamb from the hilltop to Hong Kong.

We visit the innovative Liskennett centre, which is providing a lifeline for people with autism in rural Ireland, while we have some real-life fashion with a very deserving mother-daughter makeover in Charleville. Don’t they look fabulous?

In Living Life, Aisling Hussey meets singer Tommy Fleming ahead of his new role in the show Paddy, which comes to the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in September, while we also have top tips for anybody planning a trip to the Camino. (Note, you might consider stocking up on the Epsom salts before you leave home!)

And with the week that’s in it with the first round of CAO offers, Mary Phelan takes a closer look at this year’s points in agricultural courses, while Ciara Leahy has sage advice for students heading off to college when it comes to renting a property.

Enjoy the read.