Windsor Sweet Pea Plants

Sweet Pea Windsor

If you're after a dramatic flower for your garden, sweet pea Windsor is literally the best of the bunch! Its blooms are a velvety dark maroon and chocolate, with large, frilly flowers and long, strong stems.
Have a look at our full range of sweet pea seedlings.

Our Sweet Peas are delivered in purpose-designed, recycled cardboard packaging, and are ready to be planted out when you get them.
We generally send them out between March and May, but we will email you with the likely delivery timescale once you have placed your order.

Windsor is a Spencer-type sweet pea, with a heady, proper sweet pea fragrance - it will take you back to your grandparents' gardens. Despite the nostalgia it evokes, Windsor was bred in 1999, so benefits from extra-large flowers.

Windsor has some of the largest flowers of the Spencers, which, when combined with its outstanding perfume, makes it the perfect choice for flower arrangers, whether in a large display or a few stems placed in a simple glass, cottage garden style.

Garden Design Ideas

Windsor is an easy sweet pea to grow in your garden. Grow them over arches, trellises and up canes - they will always need something to clamber over. As their flowers are so dark, it's a good idea to contrast them with lighter varieties, such as the RHS Award of Garden Merit-winning Jilly with its ivory blooms with lime buds.

Make your vegetable garden more decorative and attract more pollinators by planting them alongside runner beans - be careful not to get spent pods mixed up with peas or beans, as the seeds are poisonous.

For best results, feed Windsor fortnightly with a high-potash fertiliser and keep well watered. Deadheading and picking blooms regularly encourages new flowers to form.

Windsor is very popular as an exhibition variety because its flowers are so uniform and intricate. If you're growing them for the show bench, they'll need a bit more care than in the ordinary garden to get those blooms even bigger and better.

Features

• Colour: Maroon and dark chocolate
• Stem: Long-stemmed
• Height: Up to 1.8m
• Scent: Strong perfume
• Flowering: June to September
• Planting Months: March-June
• Type: Spencer variety

History and Trivia

For longer vase life, pick sweet peas when there are at least two unopened flowers at the tip. They are a short-lived cut flower, lasting at best four of five days. You can increase this by adding sugar or flower food to the water, which will extend vase life.

Spencer sweet peas were initially bred by Silas Cole, a gardener working for the Spencer family (of princess Diana fame). They combined the heady scent of their forebears like Cupani together with improved petal size and stem length.