Windsor Sweet Pea Plants

Sweet Pea Windsor

If you're after a dramatic flower for your garden, sweet pea Windsor is literally the best of the bunch! Its blooms are a velvety dark maroon and chocolate, with large, frilly flowers and long, strong stems.
Have a look at our full range of sweet pea seedlings.

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.

Windsor is a Spencer-type sweet pea, with a heady, proper sweet pea fragrance - it will take you back to your grandparents' gardens. Despite the nostalgia it evokes, Windsor was bred in 1999, so benefits from extra-large flowers.

Windsor has some of the largest flowers of the Spencers, which, when combined with its outstanding perfume, makes it the perfect choice for flower arrangers, whether in a large display or a few stems placed in a simple glass, cottage garden style.

Great in your garden or for show

Windsor is an easy sweet pea to grow in your garden. Grow them over arches, trellises and up canes - they will always need something to clamber over. As their flowers are so dark, it's a good idea to contrast them with lighter varieties, such as the RHS Award of Garden Merit-winning Jilly with its ivory blooms with lime buds.

Make your vegetable garden more decorative and attract more pollinators by planting them alongside runner beans - be careful not to get spent pods mixed up with peas or beans, as the seeds are poisonous.

For best results, feed Windsor fortnightly with a high-potash fertiliser and keep well watered. Deadheading and picking blooms regularly encourages new flowers to form.

Windsor is very popular as an exhibition variety because its flowers are so uniform and intricate. If you're growing them for the show bench, they'll need a bit more care than in the ordinary garden to get those blooms even bigger and better.

Features

• Colour: Maroon and dark chocolate
• Stem: Long-stemmed
• Height: Up to 1.8m
• Scent: Strong perfume
• Flowering: June to September
• Planting Months: March-June
• Type: Spencer variety

Did you know...

For longer vase life, pick sweet peas when there are at least two unopened flowers at the tip. They are a short-lived cut flower, lasting at best four of five days. You can increase this by adding sugar or flower food to the water, which will extend vase life.

Spencer sweet peas were initially bred by Silas Cole, a gardener working for the Spencer family (of princess Diana fame). They combined the heady scent of their forebears like Cupani together with improved petal size and stem length.

Plant Windsor 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 into 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.