Sweet Pea Mammoth Rose Pink

The giant. Some of the largest sweet pea blooms available from seed, in a deep rose-pink that holds through the season, on long and unusually sturdy stems.

Be clear about the trade. This is a size variety. It is scented, but not in the way 'Heaven Scent' or the Old Spice types are, and if fragrance is your first requirement you would be better served elsewhere. What it gives you instead is flowers with real visual weight, which a big arrangement needs and a delicate variety cannot supply.

If you want the biggest possible blooms, grow it on the cordon system exhibitors use: allow only two or three main shoots per plant and rub out every sideshoot as it appears. All the plant's energy then goes into fewer, larger flowers. It is more work, and the difference is considerable.

It climbs to about two metres and flowers June through October. Pick daily, and more religiously with a mammoth type than any other, because bloom size drops off fast once a plant starts setting seed.