How To Grow Gorgeous Sweet Peas

Highly fragrant sweet peas are an irresistible part of summer, says Anne Swithinbank.

- Anne Swithinbank

THE wild sweet pea (Lathyrus odoratus) is now actually quite rare in the wild and visitors to its native Sicily, Cyprus and Southern Italy would be fortunate to spot the small but highly fragrant maroon and mauve-blue flowers.

Luckily, we can order and grow seeds of ‘Cupani’, a variety close to the original and named after Franciscus Cupani, the monk who, while writing a flora of Sicily in the late 1600s, brought this lovely flower into cultivation.