'Valerie Harrod' Sweet Peas

Valerie Harrod Sweet Peas

Valerie Harrod is a gorgeously perfumed annual sweet pea that's hugely popular with exhibitors, who value its long stems, heady scent and large, wavy-petalled flowers in a rich shade of sunset pink, gently turning white towards the centre of each flower. It's a Spencer-type sweet pea, which means it's a beautifully pumped up version of the Grandiflora type, with bigger flowers and ruffled petals.

Browse our sweet pea range.

Our Sweet Peas are delivered in purpose-designed, recycled cardboard packaging, and are ready to be planted out when you get them.
We generally send them out between March and May, but we will email you with the likely delivery timescale once you have placed your order.

Grow her in an open spot, against a warm wall, up a wigwam of canes or over a pergola, where she'll reach 2m, making sure you plant the seedlings where you'll be able to appreciate the fabulous perfume once summer comes. You'll also need to be able to get to the flowers to cut them, as it's a great variety for bringing indoors for vases, where the scent will fill your house.

Features 

• Colour: coral pink
• Stem: long
• Height: 2m
• Type: Spencer
• Scent: strong
• Flowering: June to September
• Planting Months: March-June
• Exhibitors' favourite
• Great for cutting
• Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit

In Your Garden Design

This coral-pink variety works well with other sweet peas in blush pink (try Mollie Rilstone) or shades of blue and lavender, such as Our Harry. Sweet peas are, of course, a cottage garden favourite, and as such they look wonderful with all the classic summer-flowering cottage garden perennials, such as lavender and roses. You can also grow sweet peas in pots, if space in your borders is limited, but do provide a network of support, such as a trellis or a wigwam of canes, and feed and water them regularly, or they can become weak and mildewy.

Plant Valerie Harrod Sweet Peas in well prepared, moist soil that ideally was enriched with organic matter the previous autumn (if you did not do it then, do it now!). Erect supports for the peas to climb up before planting. They can also be planted in pots of sufficient size - allow 6 litres per plant - and with an ideal planting medium of 50% compost, 40 %top soil and 10% well-rotted manure. General purpose compost will do however but produces fewer flowers.

The principal requirement is enough water - Sweet Peas are thirsty and hungry plants. They can cope with a little shade but flower better in full sun.

Space each plant about 30 cm apart and about 5 cm from its support. The hole should be deep enough to accommodate the longest root and the soil should come up to the level of the first side shoot. Use wire/netting/twine between the supports so that the Sweet Pea can climb naturally. You will still need to tie them in to the frame. They grow fast, so check every ten days or so.

Water well; the soil around sweet peas should never dry out. As the flowers develop pick them and then pick again, otherwise they start to form seedpods and will stop flowering altogether. Keep tying in and picking for as long as you can. Perfectionists will remove the curling tendrils which grip other stems and can result in flowers with wiggly stems and also will remove side shoots. see the website for more advice on training sweetpeas.

By all means apply a high potash and phosphate fertiliser during the growing season. (Sweet Peas actually fix nitrogen from the air into the soil so you don't need more of that.) Home-made comfrey liquid is perfect or Tomorite will do especially if you are on a sandy soil.

Did You Know?

At the turn of the last century, the king of sweet pea breeding was Silas Cole, a gardener who worked for the Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales) family. He named his first larger flowered wavy-petalled variety 'Countess Spencer', a bright pink flower he exhibited at the National Sweet Pea Society's first show, at the Royal Aquarium in 1901.