Authors

Graham Rice

Graham Rice is an internationally recognized expert on annuals of all kinds who has written 23 books, including The Sweet Pea Book and Discovering Annuals. He trained in horticulture and botany at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and is a gardening writer on London's Evening Standard. Graham has won two Garden Writers Guild awards for writing in Britain and two from the Garden Writers Association of America.

Timber Press: How did you become so intrigued with sweet peas, intrigued enough to author a book about them?

Graham: I've always grown sweet peas. I love their fragrance and their natural elegance — even the seeds are large enough to handle easily. But what I think is so alluring is the combination of this intoxicating fragrance, their enormous range of colors and patterns and their fascinating history — the first of the wavy, large-flowered Spencer types were discovered near my English home. Then I became increasingly frustrated that the only book on sweet peas had been published twenty-five years ago. So I thought I'd better write one myself.

TP: Besides the increasing interest among gardeners for plants grown in containers, what do you think are some other factors that have fuelled the renewed excitement in sweet peas?

G: In recent years many of the old varieties from the 1800s have been rediscovered and are now available from seed companies. And although the flowers may not be as large as those of modern varieties, they're very prolific and of course they have that wonderful fragrance. American gardeners are also realising that many of these heirlooms were originally raised in America — it's often assumed that they all came from England but many of the best were developed in America so American gardeners can now "grow their own", so to speak.

TP: Assuming you have sweet peas growing in your home garden, which varieties did you choose, and why?

G: Having homes both in Pennsylvania and in Northamptonshire, England, I always like to grow an American variety in England and an English variety in the States. So in England I always grow the dwarf Cupid types, originally from California a hundred years ago. A few plants of one variety look great in a terracotta pot as they fall gently over the side, and if you keep them fed and watered they'll flower for ages. This year in Pennsylvania I grew 'Gwendoline', one of the most fragrant of all sweet peas and a lovely pink and white bicolour. It was raised by David Kerley, one of England's most respected sweet pea breeders.

TP: Do you have a favorite tale to tell about a personal experience growing sweet peas?

G: One plant I was especially excited to grow was a wild sweet pea species which was only discovered in Turkey in 1987. Lathyrus belinensis is orange-yellow with red veins and is a lovely and easy-to-grow plant, especially in areas with hot summers. It may also be the key to creating a yellow sweet pea.

TP: A question for your talented wife, Judy White: What were the challenges of working with sweet peas in the lovely layouts and garden shots you produced for the book?

Judy: There were many challenges in shooting sweet peas, some of which would come crawling out of the petals just as everything seemed set for the camera to click! We worked with many varieties at one time, so keeping them fresh-looking for the time involved in the studio shots was definitely a challenge; there were cups of water holding individual varieties all over the studio. The garden shots were far easier, since nature tends to arrange flowers well itself; that was more a matter of actually finding gardens with good examples on days with lovely diffused light and little wind.

TP: Would you explain why a "truly yellow sweet pea" has been so elusive in the spectrum of sweet pea colors?

G: All the sweet peas we grow are derived from one species, Lathyrus odoratus, and none have ever been found with any yellow pigment in the flowers. A few, like 'Castle of Mey' and 'Jilly' are deep cream but those are the closest we have. The recently discovered L. belinensis is mainly yellow in colour but at first it seemed genetically incompatible with our familiar sweet peas so hybrids could not be made. But such is the lure of the yellow sweet pea that breeders are now using sophisticated techniques (but not genetic modification) to try to make hybrids, and there has been some progress. Although there have been some promising results, it will still be many years before we have a truly yellow variety with the flower quality and fragrance