Sweet pea: the Irish summer scent flower, and its cost

Sweet pea gives four days in a vase. Nothing else on this site is that short, and no amount of flower food, sharp knives or clean vases changes it much. What you get in exchange is the best scent of any flower grown in Ireland, and a flower that has to be local because it cannot survive being flown anywhere.

That trade is the whole character of the flower. It is a good argument for buying flowers weekly and cheaply in summer rather than once and expensively.

What sweet pea means

The Victorian language of flowers gave sweet pea two meanings that have held: departure, and thank you for a lovely time. It was the flower left with a host at the end of a stay, which is unusually specific for a tradition that mostly dealt in vague sentiment, and it still reads that way in florist usage.

Delicate pleasures appears in the same lists. The modern anniversary lists put sweet pea at thirty years, which is convention rather than tradition.

None of this is heavy enough to worry about. Sweet pea reads as summer and as effort, since anyone giving it either grew it or went looking for it.

Season in Ireland

June to September, and genuinely so. Sweet pea is one of the crops that made Irish flower farming viable: Flower Farmers of Ireland has over a hundred members and sweet pea is on most of their lists, precisely because a flower with four days in it cannot be imported from Kenya or Colombia.

You will find it at farmers' markets, at farm gates, at florists who buy locally, and almost never in a supermarket. Prices are set by the grower rather than by a wholesale market, so they vary, and a bunch is usually small.

The season peaks in July. By late September the stems shorten and the plants are winding down.

When to send them, and when not to

Sweet pea suits a thank you after a visit, a birthday in July, a summer wedding, or any gesture where the smell is the message. A jam jar of sweet pea on a bedside table is one of the nicest things you can give somebody, and it costs almost nothing.

It suits a summer wedding better than its reputation suggests, with one condition: the flowers have to go in on the morning of, not the day before. Buttonholes, jam jars along a table and small bridesmaid posies all work, and the cost per stem is low. For a bouquet that has to be carried and photographed all day, use something sturdier and keep sweet pea for the tables. Our wedding flower costs page covers where the money actually goes.

Do not send sweet pea by courier. It will not arrive in any state worth receiving. Do not send it for sympathy, where the flowers need to hold for a week of callers, and do not send it to an office desk on a Thursday.

Care

Cut the stems short and use a small vase. Sweet pea stems are 20cm to 30cm and thin, and a tall vase makes them look like a mistake.

Shallow cool water, changed daily. There is no woody tissue and no need for anything clever at the cut end.

Pick or pinch off every flower as it fades, and remove any seed pod forming on the plant if you are cutting your own. A sweet pea plant that sets seed stops flowering, so cutting hard is the correct way to treat it.

Keep them out of sun, off windowsills and away from radiators. They are ethylene-sensitive, so keep the fruit bowl elsewhere. In a cool hall you will get the fifth day, and that is the whole ceiling.

If scent is what you are after in another season, freesias are the year-round answer and last twice as long.