time to succumb to sweet peas, with matt mattus

EVERY YEAR when I get to the sweet pea listings in the seed catalogs, I think: This is the year, the year I’ll organize some supports in the garden for them, and indulge in their unmatched extravagance of color and fragrance.

Matt Mattus doesn’t hesitate one second, or have to think twice about sweet peas ever. They are always on the list in his Massachusetts garden, grown both as cut flowers and elements of beds and borders.

Matt, author of “Mastering the Art of Flower Gardening” (affiliate link) and also of “Mastering the Art of Vegetable Gardening,” gardens at his Worcester, Mass., home. Matt is the third generation of his family to live and garden there, in the same house with its two-acre landscape. He’s had a career as a graphic artist and toy designer at Hasbro for many years, but for at least as long he’s been passionately designing garden scenes and experimenting with one genus or another in his garden and greenhouse, where he can’t resist the impulse to try every last species or variety of something that he can get his hands on.

Read along as you listen to the Jan. 8, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of his flower-gardening book.

growing sweet peas, with matt mattus

Margaret Roach: So Matt, we should warn people though that they may have a seed-catalog or a plant-catalog shopping binge if they listen to you [laughter]. How are you?

Matt Mattus: I’m great. You make me sound like… I guess I’m more obsessed than that even. But we know we’re not alone, right?

Margaret: No. And