Sweet Pea 'Painted Lady' is a beautiful bi-colour pale and darker pink sweet pea. A very highly-scented, old-fashioned type. Also the earliest-flowering of the highly scented varieties, so excellent if you need sweet peas for May, 9/10 scent.
The result of Henry Eckford's work in the late 19th century is the Grandiflora group of sweet peas which, until this year, formed 90 per cent of the varieties I grow. They have what are now considered to be relatively small flowers and short stems with three, sometimes four flowers to a stem, but many of them are irresistible, with wonderful, strong scent and great dignity and elegance.
No garden is complete without sweet peas. Grow them over arches, teepees and trellis and plant them with your runner beans to draw lots of insect pollinators into your veg patch.
