Every year we grow sweet peas and every year, when there are a hundred other things to do in spring, we ask ourselves if it is worth it. In late October, at sowing time, their summer charm feels intangibly distant and it takes care to prevent the mice getting the young seedlings over winter and to keep them from freezing too deeply in the polytunnel. But now, in early June, as they produce almost more flowers than we can pick, the effort always does feel worth it, as every room in the house is scented with their intoxicating perfume.

I have lost count of the times garden visitors who come here in June exclaim that our sweet peas are so much further on than theirs, but a late autumn sowing means that they make the best root system and put on stronger growth to flower well before those which aren’t sown until spring. This precocity also means that the time-consuming work of tying in and picking happens in the earlier part of summer, before the fruit and vegetables come on stream and demand the lion’s share of our gardening attention.