Val Bourne reckons her garden simply wouldn't be complete without the charming sweet pea

If there’s one plant I can’t possibly do without it’s the sweet pea. I always have a row or two close to the vegetables and, although I rarely pick flowers for the house, I do pick my sweet peas for the more you pick the more you get. They sit on my kitchen table for most of early summer and I’m just about to sow mine. Proper exhibitors sow in autumn, usually in late-October or early November. This is the best way to get strong plants with good root systems. However I prefer to sow now, although I don’t think I’d win any serious prizes!

If you want to take a short cut, you can buy ready-grown plants and Simply Seeds have the Sandringham Collection, pictured. You can buy 48 plants for £15.95, or six packets of seeds for £12.75, each containing 20 seeds. Oxford Times readers can have a 10 per cent discount. These are named Spencer varieties and they include the lavender ‘Ethel Grace’, the rich-pink ‘Sylvia Moore’, the apricot-pink ‘Valerie Harrod’, the mid-blue ‘Oxford Blue’, the strong ‘White Frills’ and the scented maroon ‘Windsor’.

Contact simplyseeds.co.uk/0844 502 4444

Here are a few pointers if you’ve decided to sow your own seeds; there is no need to soak or rub the seed coat. Viable seeds will germinate within 15 days without any special treatment. Fill nine-inch deep pots with a good seed-sowing compost and water the pot well before you sow. Space the seeds out well (a maximum of seven to a four-inch pot) and cover with a half to an inch of compost. Place in cool greenhouse and protect from mice with wire. Once the plants reach four inches in height remove them from the greenhouse and harden them off by putting them outside for a week.

Prepare the ground by digging thoroughly, add a slow-release fertiliser like blood fish and bone, or growmore, or a poultry-based manure. I use the powdered 6X chicken manure because it’s easier to handle. (I used to own a dog who ate the pellets, with disastrous results for all of us.) Put in your twiggy hazel sticks, or your canes and supporting net before planting. Loosen the roots of the sweet peas and, using a trowel, plant out the sweet peas roughly nine inches apart in a light and sunny position. I pinch my plants out straight after planting so that they form bushy plants. Water them in well and then continue to water them in dry weather using warm water from a can — until the sweet peas are mostly up the supports. Pick your sweet peas every other day and remove any seed pods to keep them flowering.

Most showy sweet peas are Spencers and the originals were bred by Silas Cole, the head gardener of Lord Spencer at Althorp Hall, in Northants, in the early years of the 20th century. These larger-flowered varieties have long, strong stems, a sweet fragrance and they come mainly in pastel colours.

The Grandifloras were bred at the end of the 19th century and varieties usually have three flowers per stem on a medium-length stem. This gives them a delicate old-fashioned air some gardeners like. The scent can be very intense too.