Garden Notes

Perennial sweet pea vine blooming in my front garden

In the pursuit of a garden that is attractive with flowers blooming from spring to fall, I have acquired more than one “volunteer plant” that turned out to be a keeper. If I find an unfamiliar plant, I usually wait until it blooms before deciding whether it deserves a spot in the garden.

One year I noticed a small plant growing next to the roses. Based on the foliage, I thought it might be a sweet pea and I decided to move it to a better spot and give it a chance. That sweet pea grew to be a beautiful green vine that produced pink/mauve flowers. However, the blooms on my volunteer were not fragrant and when I looked up the plant, I found it was a perennial sweet pea (lathyrus latifolia).

The research also said that all parts of my new plant were poisonous and that it self-seeds freely, so it could become a pest. I didn’t care! I loved how my vine looked and decided to keep it and deal with any issues.

That was about 8 years ago and I have kept it in the garden ever since. Each year it blooms beautifully for a long time in mid-summer and it doesn’t seem to mind if I trim to remove some of the pods. In fact, trimming seems to make the sweet pea bloom even more freely. I am careful not to let the seed pods ripen out to circumvent the self-sowing issue and in the fall I cut back the vine to the ground and dispose of the whole plant and any remaining pea pods. Using this method, I have had very few new volunteer sweet peas in the garden and any I do find are easy to remove.

Finding my perennial sweet pea volunteer is one of those lucky accidents that just happen in the garden. The vine is attractive and the bloom color complements my roses growing nearby. Also, I have not noticed any pests or diseases, so it is basically carefree, just the sort of plant I welcome into the garden