Light: sun
Form: Spreading
Height: 1 to 8 feet
Width: 1 to 2 feet
Flower Colors: shades of white, orange, blue, purple, pink, red, yellow
Bloom Time: winter - late spring

Special Features:
Beds/Borders
Climber
Cut Flowers
Flowers
Fragrant
Showy Flowers
Winter Interest

Prized for their pretty, intensely fragrant flowers, most sweet peas are grown as cool-season annual vines, reaching 4 to 6 feet tall, but some are bushy 1- to 3-foott-tall dwarfs. All produce lovely clusters of 1-inch long, pea-type flowers in white, light orange, yellow, lavender, blue, red, purple; some produce bi-color flowers. Longer-stemmed types are classic cut flowers.

Attractive gray-green leaves nicely complement these blossoms. Bloom time depends on the variety with many blooming in early winter in mild climates and early spring to midsummer elsewhere.

Notable Varieties
'Royal Family' is especially heat-tolerant and fragrant

Most older varieties, such as 'Antique Fantasy' and 'Painted Lady' are fragrant while newer cultivars may not be

Care
Sweet pea prefers fertile, well-drained soil, enriched with lime when possible. Sweet peas should be fertilized heavily, and watered well. They grow best in areas with long, cool growing seasons. A support structure, such as a trellis, often necessary for any sweet pea growing more than a foot or so high.