I have finally fallen for sweet peas. I resisted them for a long time. Thought they took up valuable poles that could more usefully be packed with edible peas or French beans. Aside from companion planting, the plot is for food, not flowers (well, there are the sunflowers alongside saffron-coloured calendula, tagetes and nasturtium, but Plot 29 is not a flowerbed).
Then, last year, I was seduced, overcome. I sowed sweet peas at the entrance to the plot, a heavy-scented gateway, a sensual overload.
You can start sweet pea seeds off early when little else stirs. Some over-winter them. I wouldn’t, but I asked a farmer friend to grow me half a dozen or so in her greenhouse. Then she sent me a hundred inch-high plants.
I fretted and nurtured them and when they were around 9in tall, begged friends for help with homing. Now they are growing in four other London gardens (I can see Kala’s clambering her wall as I write) and on three tall structures on the plot. And, of course, they make me wildly happy.
They are heavily scented, like roses grown for Sufi tombs, or jasmine night-picked for temple garlands. They are fragrant like flowers offered to gods.
They are coloured in watercolour washes, the opposite of orange. I train them up jute-strung poles, fold them into hazel pyramids. And here they are, delicate creams, pinks, purples, the shades of old lady lace.
They frame the entrance to the plot: twin towered, like dogs on a crusader’s tomb. A signal of care, concern, a threshold; an entrance sure as a secret garden key. Welcome, they breathe, come rest, pick dill flowers and coriander. Pick peas and beans, and flowers and purple leaves. Slow down, become still, let the garden give up its scent.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
