Sweet pea fatigue and snails

If, like me, you're a keen gardener, you've doubtless swapped views this summer on which of your garden plants have survived, thrived - or sunk without trace. Sadly, due to the prolonged cold and wet weather - which has brought out the slugs and snails in unprecedented armies - there are more failures than success stories to be reported.

My dahlias, despite my best efforts, are being decimated by snails, despite the fact that I've grown them in pots and mulched their compost with sharp grit; I've even seen snails half buried in the grit, so they look like a larger stone in the mix. Even my succulents have signs of chomping. The runner beans ran to ground soon after they started and it is clearly not going to be a bumper year for tomatoes. However against the odds, one flower has gone berserk, and shows no signs of giving up: the sweet pea.

So forgive me if this sounds like swanking, but I have sweet pea fatigue. After weeks of cutting the flowering stems every other day, if only to prevent them from going to seed, my thumb has a blister from excessive scissor action and, to be frank, I have had my fill. And as I write so have every vase, jug and a few of our drinking glasses - 18 in all. They're full of gorgeous, sweet-scented bouquets in shades of lilac, scarlet, magenta, white, purple, sky blue, sugar pink, burgundy; there is even a sweet pea of purple and violet that is a dead ringer for the sublime Matucana.

Strange, because they were all a mixed bunch - seedlings - picked up from the garden centre in late March, and called something weedy like Summer Skies Mix. I planted about a dozen at the base of a wigwam of hazel poles and there they sat, for weeks on end, doing absolutely nothing through those weeks of grey skies and perpetual rain.

And I panicked, thinking they had been there too long and for them, it would be too little, too late. So I planted more, at the sides of both garden arches, as insurance. Surely some would flower? Some and more indeed did, as soon as the sun put in an appearance. I could practically see them growing on a daily basis. And because they were late starters, unusually for this late in summer, they're still flowering.

It takes me at least an hour every two days to snip off the flowering stems and still they come… the house smells sublime, there are sweet peas in every room. Neighbours, friends and family have been delighted by bunches of the pretty perfumed blooms. To paraphrase Elvis Costello's song, It's been a good year for the sweet peas. But next year, I just might plant a few less.

New tree lilies on trial

One of the perks of my job is that I get to try out new plant introductions. Which is how I came to plant three very fat lily bulbs this spring. Tree lilies, to be precise.

The buzz on the block - well, the horticultural blurb from Thompson & Morgan, to be more precise - is that tree lilies grow up to 8ft in as little as two years, and that one single bulb can produce up to thirty 8-inch trumpet blooms. The stalks are almost 5cm thick.

This is my Starburst's first year of flower, and it's doing rather well (above). The stems are only just over 2ft tall and a mere half-inch thick, the flowers are 8ins in diameter if you uncurl the petals and measure from tip to tip, and there are only a combined amount of 19 flowers, some still in bud.

The fragrance isn't 'fantastic', as T & M state - it's sweet and pleasant - but then nothing matches the perfume of Lilium regale. Whether you like the paintbrush effect of jammy red on lemon is a matter of personal preference; I rather like it.

The point of this lily, like the other new tree lilies, is that it's bigger and bolder than the rest - and judging by its premier performance in this summer of grey skies and relentless rain, it will be a stormer next summer.

My lily favourite, however, is Lilium nerone (above), which is currently flowering on the terrace and has garnered more compliments than Starburst. It isn't that big but is certainly bold and is decidedly beautiful: shiny, carmine-red speckled tiger lilies. Absolutely stunning. When they produce a tree lily with those blooms, T & M will really have something to trumpet.