Make a sweet pea screen

Why grow sweet peas as a screen?

Sweet peas need support and a screen is a great way of exploiting their natural growing habit while introducing height, colour and scent in one season. Create a screen to separate your vegetable patch or add privacy to a seating area.

Any variety can be used, so work with your favourite colour scheme to create a screen that fits with your garden.

What to do

• Choose a sunny spot and hammer two stakes into the ground to make a row.
• Attach parallel wires between the posts, one at the bottom and one further up. Push canes into the soil every 22cm (9in) and secure to the wires.
• Plant sweet peas in front of each cane.
• Let plants grow to 30cm (12in) and then select the strongest shoot and remove the rest.
• Tie shoot to cane and regularly pinch off side shoots and tendrils.
• When plants have reached the top of canes, untie and lay stems on the ground.
• Re-tie stems to a cane further along the row, so the tip of the plant reaches about 30cm (12in) up its new cane. This way you will create the criss-cross network of stems and build up your screen.
• Tip: Sweet peas are easy to grow from seed, but you can buy ready-grown young plants.

Growing tips

• Once you've made your screen, dig a planting hole in front of each cane, making it slightly wider and deeper than the root ball of the plant.
• Allow plants to grow for four weeks until they are about 30cm (12in) tall, then select the best shoot and remove the rest. Tie it to the cane and regularly pinch of side shoots and tendrils.
• Make sure you wipe your knife or secateurs between cutting each plant to prevent diseases from spreading.
• Secure the sweet pea to its cane with string, garden twine or special sweet pea rings.

Aftercare

• When the sweet peas have grown too tall for their supporting canes, untie all of them and lay the stems carefully on the ground, taking care not to snap the brittle stems.
• Next, re-tie stems to a cane further along the row, so the tip of the plant reaches about 30cm (12in) up its new cane.
• Doing this will allow stems to grow longer and guarantee more flowers.

Watch video

Alys Fowler demonstrates how to sow sweet peas for fragrant flowers in summer.

Five to try

• 'Orange Crush' - very bright flowers
• 'Midnight' - deep maroon
• 'Gwendoline' - light centre with pink edges
• 'Oxford Blue' - very strongly scented, navy blue
• 'Castle of Mey' - creamy white, frilly blooms