Sweet peas are a long-time garden favorite, loved for their beautiful flowers and unforgettable fragrance. These climbing flowers are easily grown from seed each year and add enchantment to any garden where the springs and summers are cool. Here are our best tips for selecting and planting sweet pea flowers.
Choosing a Sweet Pea – Heritage vs. Modern
The original sweet peas grown in Europe had small blossoms with a strong, pleasing fragrance. Breeding work in England during the nineteenth century produced the modern sweet pea.
- Heritage varieties of sweet peas have an exquisite perfume, but the flowers tend to be much smaller.
- Modern varieties have large, spectacular flowers, often at the expense of their scent.
If you want to have fragrant sweet peas in your garden, check the information on the packet when you are choosing the seed. If the packet doesn’t state that the flowers will be fragrant, they probably won’t have a scent. It’s possible to find modern sweet peas that have a strong fragrance as well as large showy flowers, but finding a variety that offers both may take a bit of searching.
There is a way to ensure the scent of sweet peas in your garden. Buy a seed packet of a fragrant variety and mix them with the seeds of a modern variety that produces beautiful scentless flowers. Then, plant the seed mix in a sunny location. By mixing the seeds, you can enjoy the fragrance as well as the beauty of the lovely flowers.
Tips for Growing Sweet Peas
Choose a sunny spot that gets at least six hours of direct sunlight.
Sweet peas should be grown from seed because they don’t transplant well.
Plant the seeds in very early spring. Or, they can be planted in the fall where winters are not severe. The blossoms last much longer in cool temperatures because it encourages strong root development. The flowers quickly die and form seed pods in the heat of summer.
Most sweet peas are climbing plants that will need support. But there are also varieties available that have a naturally smaller size and can be grown in pots.
To keep the flowers blooming for a long time, do not allow them to go to seed. Pick the seed pods as soon as they appear.
If you live in a location where the springs and summers are cool, why not try growing the sweet pea? Whether you prefer the modern sweet peas that have stunning, large frilly flowers, or the more modest scented varieties that first captured the hearts of gardeners centuries ago, you can find sweet peas to suit your taste.
If you want to grow more sweet-smelling flowers, check out Fragrant Plants for Containers.
