Roses and sweet peas will always have a place in my garden for their quintessential English nature and form, as well as the delicate beauty and scent the provide.

Modern shrub roses are fairly low maintenance and just require a good mulch of compost and prune in the early spring.

Sweet peas are a little more labour intensive, but worth the investment. A late autumn, winter of early spring sowing will bring multiple blooms all summer, just watch out for the mice as they love to nibble the sown seeds. They are plants that need to climb, so some sort of frame is needed and they will require tying in at the start. They are a plant that produces more flowers the more you pick and their scent can simply fill the room when cut. Don’t think of letting them go to seed though or they will stop flowering.