Antirrhinum Sweet Duet Apple Blossom

Fully double open-faced blooms in porcelain pink and cream, each one a ruffled rosette closer to a miniature azalea than anything you would recognise as a snapdragon. Vase life runs to ten days and beyond, which is exceptional for the genus.

That vase life is a side effect of the breeding. With the dragon's mouth opened out, the flowers are difficult to pollinate, so the plant keeps producing and individual blooms keep going rather than being fertilised and shutting down. It is a wedding and event flower more than a cottage border one, and it looks it: soft, uniform and slightly formal.

The trade-offs are the usual ones for a double F1. Seed will not come true, so it is an annual purchase. The open ruffled flower offers bumblebees far less than a single snapdragon does. And the uniformity that makes it good in a cutting row makes it look a little planted-out in a mixed border. The scent is real but gentle, sweet and faintly honeyed, and you have to get close to find it.