Horticultural Highlight- Sweet Peas (Lathyrus odoratus)

Yes peas! Sweet Peas are possibly the most favoured annual flower amongst gardeners. Fragrant, effortlessly elegant and the choice in varieties is exceptional, how could they not be a favourite.

I was given a small Sweet Pea pot from my auntie at around mid June, just as I was starting work on my new garden. There were two young plants about 50cm in height just starting to train around 3 canes with very few flowers, unfortunately I do not know the variety but after extensive research I have settled on the option it might be Sweet Pea 'Gwendoline'. The flowers are frilly, bright pink shot through with lilac with a slight white base to each petal, and sumptuously fragrant.  It's now happily settled into its new plot and it stands about 1.5m (with the a little help from canes of course) and about the same wide and its abundance of flowers appears to be never ending. Since I am growing it on for ornamental purposes, I pinch out the pea pods as they begin to form which encourages the plant to produce new flowers, but I never imagined it to be still flowering this strongly coming towards the end of October, it has taken quite a battering to the high winds over the week or so as well, from which I have had to reposition the canes back into the ground many times. It's just been lighting up a corner of one of my beds for many months and looks as through it won't cease yet.

I have re-started a new generation of Sweet Peas now, ready to be overwintered and planted out of in the spring next year. I have 21 happy Sweet Pea 'Cupid Pink' seedlings, which when they flower will have flower heads in a combination of white and soft pink, and fingers crossed they all go on to flower, I will use every one of them. This is a more compact variety, so hopefully the prevailing wind won't be as great of a problem. I have some taller ones to be sown also (Old Spice Mixed) www.mr-fothergills.co.uk and they will be trained to hide a particularly disastrous fence in the veg plot, the fragrance and colour will be enticingly pleasant when I'm working in that area, much better than the fence anway.