Island Life Magazine Ltd February / March 2016 | Page 63

GARDENING

to pick great bunches for the house every
few days.
It’s essential to keep cutting and dead
heading sweet peas otherwise they
start to set seed and stop flowering very
quickly. Although Lathyrus odoratus was
discovered growing wild in Sicily in 1697
by a monk, Father Cupani, the flowers that
we know and love today exist because
of the vision of a few English gardeners.
In 1700 Father Cupani sent seeds to a
schoolmaster in Enfield who managed
to grow a weedy looking plant with tiny
maroon flowers with a purple standard
whose only outstanding quality was
it’s intense, sweet fragrance. From this
unpromising start over the next century

a mere six new varieties were developed,
all except one named Painted Lady bore
small, unremarkable but highly scented
flowers. It took 170 years for sweet peas to
catch the imagination of one or two very
far sighted gardeners who somehow saw
the flowers potential and devoted their
lives to creating the forerunners of the
glorious variety we enjoy today.
Not all sweet peas are annuals, or even
climbers and there are a number of
perennial varieties which are useful in
the garden if you don’t have the time or
inclination to grow the annual varieties.
Most have pretty sugar pink flowers
although L.latifolius ‘White Pearl’ lives
up to it’s name with pure white flowers.

Give them a well drained spot in a sunny
garden and they’ll give you flowers for
weeks on end.
Although the best and earliest
flowering plants are produced from seed
sown in December or January, there’s
still time to sow seeds now if you want to
grow annual sweet peas. They have long
roots and appreciate as little disturbance
at planting time as possible which is why
they’re often grown in special long pots.
Pinch out the tips when they reach 10cm
to make bushier plants and plant them in
a sunny spot in good soil, provide canes
or other supports and pick regularly for a
lasting display.

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