Growing sweet peas is simple - if you know a few insider tricks

On the other hand, it depends on how you look at it. The wallabies would feel I have great experience in growing superb crops of sweet peas for them to munch before the stems get to the tougher flowering stage. Even as I write this they may well be peering out of the bushes and asking themselves "Will she plant sweet peas this year?"

The bower birds would be unanimous in applauding the few times I actually managed to grow a whole trellis of blooms - they guzzled every just-opened flower every morning before I'd finished breakfast.

In other words, I can grow the plants, produce delightful blooms - but have yet to be able to gather an armful of sweet pea flowers for myself.

Sweet peas were once "sweet", small flowers with a strong fragrance that bloomed over a few weeks in spring. Plant breeders slowly developed far bigger blooms with longer flowering periods. They were gorgeous, with only one problem - the sweet scent had been sacrificed to size.

Today, however, you can nip into the garden centre for a punnet of sweet pea seedlings, or order a packet of seeds online that will give you blooms in almost every shade of blue, pink and white, with a fragrance that would counteract even a teenage boy's socks. For some reason sweet peas are rarely found in florists - possibly sweet peas don't travel well, or tolerate cold storage. If you want bunches of sweet peas to scent your home or office, you need to grow them yourself.

This is simple, with a few tricks. The first is to plant the seeds between now and the end of March. Sweet peas bloom in spring, but if you want a good crop of sturdy stems they need to be planted so they get autumn's growth, and the sudden burst of sturdiness that comes from plants grown over winter to bloom in spring.

If you want to be traditional, plant them on St Patrick's Day, March 17, but earlier is better. In fact you can even plant them till the end of August if you have a sunny spot where the ground doesn't freeze, but you may not get much of a crop. The better and bigger the stems, the better, bigger and more floriferous your crop will be.

Sweet peas are traditionally grown on a trellis in the garden, or along the front fence, or even up a tepee of sticks, but they'll also grow well in pots or even hanging baskets, where some will grow up the ropes the baskets hang from and others trail down. It looks a bit messy but smells divine. Plant the seeds about 12mm deep.

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Just make sure there is full sun, well drained, weed-free soil, and feed the young plants well while they're still actively growing. A slow-release fertiliser is perfect.

The seeds are largish. Plant two together, with about 15-20cm between the pairs of plants. Water, feed; then stop feeding while growth stops in winter, and feed lightly again when the stems begin to grow and produce flowers in spring. Don't overdo it though - too much tucker at this time will give you a lovely cop of leaves but few blooms.

Now pick - and keep picking. A well grown sweet pea bed should give you three months of blooms through spring and early summer. You can extend this by mulching the soil around them heavily in spring to keep the soil cool. Fruit fly netting will stop the birds from pinching the flowers, but look ugly.

The best prevention is to have lots of other blooms to keep the birds occupied, and don't grow blue or yellow sweet peas as bower birds love them to decorate their bowers. The large, stunningly fragrant pink blooms of sweet pea Edith Flanagan will flower from about September while dwarf varieties like Little Red Riding Hood, with red and white blooms and long stems for picking, are great for vases.

There are hundreds more varieties around, including a perennial variety, though I haven't seen its seeds for sale for a few years. Plant the varieties you fall in love with. With luck the wallabies don't hear there's a nearby sweet pea crop, and the bower birds are occupied stripping the flowers off your crab apples, apricots and cherry trees instead.