Mid-July tips for the garden: gather sweet peas

Sweet peas in full flower in high summer require attention little but often to ensure the continue to yield as they should

The sweet pea, of rustic appearance and harmonious colour range, is one of the distinctive pleasures of high summer in the garden. Grown on the cordon system and kept picked, they will continue to yield for weeks. Like any cut flower, they need to be constantly looked over and attended to, just for a few minutes each evening. This means cutting the magnificently fragrant flowers regularly, otherwise they will readily go to seed, and the plants' lifecycle will soon be over. This is the sort of gentle pottering, little and often, of which so much good gardening is made.

* Subscribe to Country Life and save 40% 

Country Life

Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.