I Grew These Sweet Peas
Sweet peas work best in cooler regions in Australia
I had heard so many people on Insta talk about the amazing scent of sweet peas and realised I had never smelled the fragrance myself. You can’t buy sweet peas in Australia anymore. So I decided to try growing them for myself. And it turned out to be a major success. #modesty
My motivation
It’s extremely rare to be able to buy scented flowers of any type today because the bulk of flowers on the market (the type we pick up at the supermarket) are shipped in from South America, specifically Colombia. Not too many flower varieties can survive being transported across the world, then held in the cold storage in warehouses, before finally making to the shops, so delicate scented flowers like sweet peas have gone by the wayside.
That all sucks, but I want flowers!
Learning to grow them is my way of not only getting beautiful, high quality, rare flowers, but also my strong vote against unethical processes. If I’m buying a bunch of flowers for $10 and they’ve been flown from Colombia to Australia, then someone else is paying the price: the workers, the environment?
As it turns out, my effort in growing sweet peas was more than rewarded. I had over 50 beautiful scented bunches in total!
How to grow them
For anyone growing a sweet pea garden in Australia for the first time, the good news is that there’s very little that is hard about it. The main things I learned was that the traditional wisdom is to plant sweet peas in Australia on St Patrick’s Day in March. They then grow over Winter and usually flower at the start of Spring. The other main points are that sweet peas grow up a trellis or fence, so I had to make sure I had one, and they need a good water most days.
I planted them 10cm apart and had 20 metres of trellis to cover. You do the math! I planted around 200 sweet pea seeds, which sounds like a lot but is only around 10 seed packets. I would say I spent about $40 to buy sweet pea seeds and got around 40-50 bunches of flowers from it. What a win! I would say if you were growing them yourself for the first time that buying 2-3 sweet pea seed packets would be plenty.
Awesome Varieties
I started this year by planting the Pink & White sweet pea. I don’t know what it is about them, but they grew about a month earlier than all the others!
I chose 3 shades of purple: Leamington which is a beautiful light purple, Erewhon which is a purple and blue flower, and Noel Sutton which is a deep purple/blue with a gorgeous scent.
The others were in the pink/red spectrum. Beaujolais is a deep burgundy, The Major is a speckled maroon heirloom variety, Winston Churchill is bold bright red and the peach-coloured Marjorie Carrier was the biggest bloom.
Sweet Pea snapshot
Anyone who knows me knows I usually do an experiment and move on to greener pastures. However, I will be absolutely be growing sweet peas again. Sweet peas are one of the only things you can plant over winter, they are super easy and the flowers are so productive. I’m also doing a lot of bee research at the moment for my upcoming course The Bee Project and the bees and other butterflies and insects absolutely loved them.
The main thing I would do differently would be being more organised with labelling them. I planted the varieties a little randomly so many of the colours were jumbled in together on the trellis’. I do like the wild look of that, but it might be nice to have big areas of each distinct colour.
Looking for more information? Check out When To Plant Sweet Peas In Australia or download my free 2023 Seasonal Flower Calendar!