Garden Plants

Climbers: sweet peas

By Julie Hollobone

The sweet pea is a climbing cottage-garden favourite, highly valued for its scent

'Sweet peas look very effective when grown on canes or sticks arranged as an obelisk, either in pots or in garden borders.'

Sweet peas

Delicate and distinctive flowers

Loved for their scent, no cottage garden should be without sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) those traditionally popular climbers, although they look good in many garden settings. As hardy annuals, they need to be grown from seed every year, but they are fast to reach a flowering size and will repay the early effort with abundance.

Seeds can be sown in mid-spring for planting out in May, to flower in midsummer. Alternatively, or even additionally, seeds sown in late autumn and planted out in spring will flower earlier and so extend the flowering peak.

Sweet peas support themselves by twining tendrils on their stems that will easily catch onto string or netting. As the normal growth is only to about 2m (6ft), they look very effective when grown on canes or sticks arranged as an obelisk, either in pots or in garden borders.

They make ideal cut flowers but choose carefully as the scent can be variable. Flowers should be cut frequently and all faded flowers removed regularly to encourage more buds to form.

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