how to make a sweet pea table centrepiece

Sarah shows us how to make a really quick and easy, colourful table centrepiece with sweet peas, something that is perfect for a summer party or wedding.

I was out in the garden this morning picking sweet peas. Whenever I pick them I put rubber bands on my arm and as soon as I pick a little bunch, I rubber band them and pop then into water.

The reason for that is you can bring them inside and make a table centre really quickly. Here I have the darker, rich colours on one side and the paler colours on the other.

Then, once you have them in place, you can go in with a pair of scissors and snip the rubber bands and spread them around slightly. The other advantage of this system, is for varieties like ‘Matucana’, by the end of the summer it will get shorter and shorter and you’ll wonder where you can use it within arrangements, but actually you can see I was cutting quite a bit off the stems for this centre piece, so a short stem would work well.

I’ve just been to pick the final touch to this arrangement and that is a wonderful species pea called ‘Lathyrus chloranthus’ which isn’t scented but I love it. You pick the whole vine like I have and I’m just poking it through the arrangement to give contrast with the colour of the sweet peas, but also to mess up the top of it slightly, so it’s not too perfect and neat.

If I was doing this on a smaller scale I would separate the colours, putting all the rich colours in one bowl and the pale colours in another.

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