These are not garden sweet peas. Cut sweet peas are glasshouse-grown, harvested young, and cultivated specifically for the vase — longer stems, stronger fragrance, and a week or more of vase life that the delicate climbing garden plant never achieves.
In 1699, a Sicilian monk named Franciscus Cupani found an extraordinary wildflower near Palermo. He thought it too beautiful to keep to himself, and sent seeds to England. Within decades, sweet peas had become the defining flower of the English summer garden. There is a reason for that — and if you have ever pushed your face into a bunch of fresh sweet peas, you already know what it is.
Their scent is unlike anything else in floristry. It is lighter than jasmine, more complex than rose, more fleeting than freesia. It is the specific smell that British people mean when they say "a garden in summer" — not any single thing, but the whole feeling of a warm afternoon in June, translated into fragrance.
Sweet peas cannot be forced out of season without losing everything that makes them special. They are available for roughly eight weeks — May to July — and then they are gone until next year. If you see them here, order without a second thought. The window is short. That is part of the beauty.
The Victorian name for sweet peas was
blissful pleasure. They were, as always, exactly right.
Best wishes, James Hunt MD
Any questions about this flower? Email
enquiries@flowersbyflourish.com — we love to talk about flowers.
Best wishes, James Hunt MD
