Garden (Sweet Pea Posy)

Filling the home with freshly cut blooms from the garden is one of life's great pleasures.

Nothing is better than a home filled with vases of flowers, and growing and picking your own also reduces your carbon footprint, as most shop-bought bouquets are grown abroad.

Sweet peas are among my favourites for their beauty and scent, and they make wonderful cut flowers.

This year I grew them in a tall pot supported by bamboo canes and picked them weekly for the house. They are truly, divinely beautiful.

Their delicately coloured, papery petals look almost as though they were made of tissue paper.

I grow both kinds of sweet pea, perennial and annual. The perennial variety has no fragrance but a longer vase life. My favourites are the annuals: their scent is intoxicating, and the more you pick, the more blooms you get.

Grown in a pot, sweet peas can be placed anywhere in the border, among other plants in a sunny spot.

They look equally good on a patio or balcony, provided the position is sunny.