It is hard to describe Lord Nelson's colour - a cross between Elizabeth Taylor's eyes and a tropical sea on a cloudy day - suffice to say they are a deep violet, navy colour of real depth and beauty. The petals are slightly veined which gives the small but plentiful flowers a look of fragility which entirely belies this extraordinarily tough seadog. The flowers cover the sturdy stems and are so highly scented that they will fill your garden with perfume, and then your house if they are planted nearby. A real doer, Lord Nelson is one of the best examples of Henry Eckford's sweet pea breeding programme in the early 1900s and is a valued member of our list of sweetpeas for sale.
The colour of this sweet pea should not be confined to below decks in the vegetable garden but should be there like a great wave of colour in your borders trailed over a tepee or some such. Lord Nelson flowers so prolifically and its exotic blue works well with pale blues, lavenders and pastels to bright golds, reds or silvers. Try harbouring Lord Nelson next to a shrub rose like Graham Thomas or intertwined with his honeysuckle for an out of this world scent sensation. Other old-fashioned sweet peas include the lovely Flora Norton, King Edward V11 or Mrs Collier as suitable first mates or another port of call could be to grow some of the more modern Spencer varieties as a contrast.
Lord Nelson has to date and remains an extraordinarily popular sweet pea that was introduced in 1907 in Wiltshire by Isaac House. We don't think anyone needs reminding that Lord Nelson was the Admiral who won and was killed at Trafalgar in 1805 and now immortalised annually in this sweet pea.