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Cupping is a body therapy that originated with Chinese Medicine. It involves placing cups on the skin to create suction and positive circulation.

If you are growing fruit and vegetables this is likely to be a bountiful time of year for you – and I wish I had the space, time and diligence needed myself to run a kitchen garden. Unfortunately, I don’t – but there are still things in the garden that are good enough to eat, and lots of us are likely to have these without even realising.

RONAN FAGAN

Do you know what a pergola is? I only ask because I’ve noticed a good bit of confusion around this, especially recently, as people are looking to create outdoor rooms while there are still restrictions on meeting inside – lots of people are asking for pergolas when what they actually need is a veranda, loggia or even an awning. It’s perfectly okay not to have the distinctions at your fingertips – my job as a designer is to help you figure out what’s going to work and the technical terms are beside the point as long as we get where we need to. But a pergola can be a really good addition to your garden so let’s explore some of the things it can do.

The glorious clouds of cow parsley along the roadside verges this month have got me thinking about wildflowers. They can be fleeting, but en masse they are certainly beautiful. If you’d like to recreate this wild look in your garden, a wildflower meadow area could be the way to go.

Choosing the right paving is one of the most important decisions you’ll make if you’re renovating your garden or planning a new one. It’s probably the biggest investment you’ll make in terms of cost – not just the cost of buying your paving but of laying it correctly too. Natural flagstone paving and brick or block paving all have their place – but the suggestion I’m making increasingly often to my clients recently is to consider outdoor porcelain paving.

This week, I thought we might look at some perennials that hold the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit, just in time for summer. AGM holders, you might remember from last week’s column, are tested thoroughly by the RHS before the gong is bestowed upon them, so when shelling out for these plants you can be sure that you are giving your garden the best possible chance of reliable, healthy blooms.

When browsing in a garden centre or on a nursery website, have you ever seen a little cup or trophy symbol attached to a plant and wondered what it meant? It’s the AGM or Award of Garden Merit, given by the Royal Horticultural Society, the world’s leading authority on all things horticultural, to plants that provide outstanding performance.

Nigel Carolan, always steeped in green, takes flight after some 26 years with Connacht to become a better coach.

Some of the prettiest, most dainty flowering plants belong in the woodland category – think of native bluebells for instance – spectacular as carpets stretching underneath trees, but individually exquisite when viewed close up. Our native bluebell, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, needs lots of space to thrive and doesn’t particularly work well with other plants – so is perhaps best kept for larger gardens. The cultivated or Spanish bluebell, Hyacinthoides hispanica, should be used with caution – a sturdier, less elegant bluebell, it’s invasive and inclined to hybridise with the more delicate natives so I would avoid it.