Glengarry couple discover new sweet pea variety (8/1/25)

Glengarry's Justin and Rachel Howell have cultivated a new variety of sweet pea in their garden. Video by Aaron Smith and Paul Scambler (8/1/25)

Transcript

00:00Purely by accident and this one

00:02Which we're hoping to call Betty Howe popped up in in amongst a sweet pea called Mr. Pea, which is a

00:09Spencer variety read by Roger Parsons in England

00:12We sent pictures to him the first year and he confirmed that it wasn't a parent of Mr.

00:19Pea the sweet pea that he bred and

00:23Basically said yeah, if it holds true for

00:26For growing seasons, then yeah, it's your sweet pea. Basically. It does happen in sweet peas

00:32They produce rogues just randomly come up

00:35Yeah, we're quite lucky. Really the similarities are there like the I

00:41Don't know if you can pick it up. It has a frill around the outside edge

00:45Which makes it part of the Spencers which originally is in the early 1900s from the early Spencer

00:51that's where they all came from the distinguishing difference is

00:55The coloring similar but Mr. P has flake all through the petals

01:00Whereas this is a solid deep purple because we're trying to build up a Tasmanian

01:06Seed bank basically that because everyone here has to buy seeds from the mainland or mostly from the mainland

01:12So you have to pay to get it shipped over and then you have to pay for the biosecurity as well

01:17Whereas we're gonna have them grown here in our temperate

01:21climate and

01:23Yeah, they're much better suited because they're yeah the seeds are grown here

01:27So the plants will do well here and it means yeah, it's more available for Tasmanians