Sow sweet peas now for early flowers next year and a riot of colour and fragrance weeks before spring-sown plants are ready.
Sweetpeas are one of the nation's favourite flowers and ideal for attracting pollinating insects into the plot as well as providing sweetly-scented cut flowers for the table. Getting them sown in autumn and keeping them going through winter might seem like a fiddle, but come next spring when you've got flowers a whole month earlier than usual you'll appreciate why you bothered.
You'll find dozens of varieties on the seed racks at our garden centre here in Chorley so browse through our selection to select your favourites. Top recommendations include old fashioned bicoloured 'Matucana' with perhaps the sweetest scent of all; 'Black Knight' in a lovely dark crimson' and 'Chelsea Centenary' in soft lavender blue. For containers, try the smaller types like 'Snoopea', 'Villa Roma Scarlet' and 'Cupid'.
Sow seed individually into tall containers like Rootrainer modules, available from our garden centre. There's no need to chit or soak the seed: just water in and they'll be up in a week or two. Put them in a coldframe to overwinter as 5cm high seedlings, and plant out next March for super-early fragrant flowers.