This is Lauren Landy’s Sweet Pea:

 

I am absolutely delighted with her flowers here already this season. Whatever the results she achieves in future shows, this warm rose pink Sweet Pea has the best shape of all our pink varieties.  Every flower produced in May was as good as those in the photograph - a remarkably consistent pea.  A visitor here for the first time gasped  “This one’s as beautiful as an orchid”

 

This beautiful flower is called "Lauren Landy" in memory of a brave and beautiful teen-ager who died from osteosarcoma in June 2004.  If you don’t already know about her, take a minute or two to read about Lauren and see her picture by clicking on this link

 

 

 

 

"Chris Harrod" features in Garden News:

One of our photos of “Chris Harrod” appears in the 4th June issue of Britain’s premier gardening weekly.  It illustrates a full-page article of good advice on preparing Sweet Peas for exhibition, written by Caroline Ball: she was one of the judges of our photo competition last year.

No trouble in the glasshouse:

After 2007 being our worst season for seed production, owing to high humidity and lack of sunshine, it looks as though 2008 will be the earliest, owing to almost a month of sunny days.  In fact, we are already cooling the plants with foliar water sprays in the hope of keeping them growing in spite of the early set of pods.  This picture was taken on 21st May.

 

 

 Yields are very low, and we are disinfecting all the seed we harvest at Cooltonagh as a precaution against damping-off problems.

Look out for "Florencecourt":

Florencecourt is the latest in the series named to honour great Irish gardens, and it reproduces the colour of its much-admired ancestor Percy Izzard as closely as possible.

 

Renowned Isle of Wight grower Keith Brewer is among several seasoned exhibitors who are trying it in its first year “out”, and it will be interesting to compare his flowers - grown from New Zealand seed - with the others which are all being grown from UK-grown seed.  Of course, there shouldn’t be any difference.

Rowallane restored:

In our seed list for 2007/8 we had to say, “... the duplex petals produced by the present stocks make it unsuitable for exhibitors.”  Last Friday I was delighted to find that careful review of the block of Rowallane growing for seed near Dublin showed not a single instance of an extra petal or a wing defect.   It looks very much as though by God’s grace we have been able to restore this variety by going back to our own seed bank for  authentic material.