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| Outside envelope and inner brown packets. Outer packet does not come complete with doodling, I did that myself |
Im happy to admit Im a seed snob, I find
the usual garden centre selections woefully lacking so usually head online to
either somewhere like Thompson and Morgan who sell a far wider variety on their
website, or to a specialist grower. Me being me, this is of course how I
got my hands on my Sweet Pea seeds. I was casually wandering around
Hampton Court two years ago admiring the grower’s stands of flowers which were
all very impressive, saw a stand of sweet peas, and this is where Hampton Court
wins out in my opinion, was able to buy them right then and there. No
‘take our leaflet and look us up online’, or write down the variety so you can
lose the bit of paper later. I like instantaneous results; I see, I buy.
The stand in question was Eagle Sweet Peas,
there was definitely more than one but I remember thinking that they had the
best varieties and helpfully sold the seeds in variety packs. I plumped
for the Staffordshire Collection as it contained most of the varieties that
really stood out on the stand to me which were ‘Just Jenny’, ‘Kiera Madeline’
and ‘Lilac Ripple’. I really wanted ‘Lisa Marie’ which is a bi-colour of
plum on silver (which is misleading as how can a plant actually be metallic, I
do hate it when people get overly exotic in colour descriptions) but as always
that one wasn’t sold in a multipack so I had to buy it separately but I don’t
remember it being overly expensive.
I would say I recommend these peas but,
having looked up the website they have completely changed the staffordshire
collection since I bought it with only five varieties remaining the same so I
can’t really... Im not sure why they’ve had a complete overhaul; I don’t know
whether they change it round to keep it fresh every year. One thing I
would say is I don’t think some of the varieties in my pack are overly reliable
at germinating, I found that where I planted two seeds of the same variety in a
cell, I would get two in lots and none in others. I don’t remember having
more than about six different colours in total but I will take special note
this year to see what Iv actually got. Yes I could have labelled the
seeds but I have a far more carefree approach, as long as I don’t accidentally
bung a runner bean in with them I can’t really see that it matters.
Other than that the colours are more interesting than
the usual mixed seed you get, the packaging is very clear and user friendly
with individual brown envelopes inside a big white one, although I did open the
wrong end on half of them and couldn’t stick them back down so that was
confusing. And they appear to ship all over the world so if your in the
market for some visit their website here http://www.eaglesweetpeas.co.uk/index.php although
they don’t ship until the end of August but just so you are prepared.
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