Sweet Pea Sowing

I don’t think a single year has gone by in the last 25 that I haven’t sown sweet peas. Maybe I forgot about them the year I had my first baby but otherwise they have been firmly part of my gardening year, sown in autumn or late winter and picked week after week in the summer. This year I didn’t get round to sowing any in the autumn, so I’m doing it now. It’s such a heartening thing to do on a grey wintry day.

Looking at sweet peas with photographer Sabina Rüber, with whom I collaborated on our book The Flower Garden. This photo is by Eva Nemeth.

There are so many varieties that it’s hard to single any out. Trying different varieties every year is part of the enjoyment of growing sweet peas, but a tip I got from my friend, the photographer Sabina Rüber (who took the photos for our book the The Flower Garden) is to make sure you always have ‘Cupani’ in your repertoire. This or the very similar ‘Matucana’ have the most highly scented flowers of any sweet pea I know, with pretty bicoloured maroon and deep purple flowers. One of the oldest varieties, it is thought to have been discovered by a Sicilian monk called Francisco Cupani in 1695. Unlike modern sweet peas that have been bred for their large, blowsy flowers, the flowers are small and delicate – but in modern varieties the scent will often have diminished at the expense of the flower size, so if you have a constant supply of ‘Cupani’ you can add it to whatever else you are picking to guarantee that classic sweet pea scent.