I've achieved my ambition of a vase of sweet peas on the kitchen table every single day for (I hope) three months. I don't grow them properly so as the season goes on the stems will get shorter and shorter but the flowers will still smell as good. Those in the vase are just a basic Unwins mix. In the past I've added in the variety 'Matucana', which has small, dark flowers and is very strongly scented. It's an odd fact that while most serious growers are men, sweet peas are regarded as quintessentially feminine. One thinks of Angela Thirkell's Mrs Brandon, draped in soft chiffons, reclining on a sofa. On her very first appearance (in The Brandons) she 'had collected another great bunch of sweet peas and was holding them thoughtfully to her face,'
Flora Klickmann was very fond of flowers and of Maude Angell's paintings of them. Here's two examples, from The Girl's Own Annual for 1919.
The modern approach is more stylised. The picture below is by Paul Gell in Flowers from a Painter's Garden.
I can't run to Mrs Brandon's 'great bunches' but I'm happy with my daily vase.
