Question: I saw drifts of cyclamens in bloom in France, and I want them for my garden. Will they survive in the Philadelphia area? If so, where can I buy the hardy variety? Haven't seen them in any garden centers I've tried.

- Nancy Doyle
Answer: I had a similar oh-ah-wow reaction to cyclamens growing happily in the wild in Croatia's Plitvice National Park, where they mixed with hepatica, European ginger, and many other charmers. It was magical.

The great news is that you can easily grow hardy cyclamens in the Philadelphia area. For those unacquainted with the hardy species, the flowers are not as big (garish) as the hothouse varieties that often become Christmas presents.

There are both spring- and fall-blooming hardy cyclamens. Cyclamen coum blooms in spring, C. hederifolium in fall (and late summer; mine have begun flowering). Over time, the corms become enormous, producing great numbers of flowers. And if the situation is to their liking, they will self-sow, though the seedlings take several years to reach blooming size. That's what you saw in France - the long-term result of self-sowing. Mine, both coum and hederifolium, have been in the ground five or six years; the hederifolium particularly produces more and more flowers each year, but I've seen only a couple of tiny, tiny seedlings so far. So don't expect French drifts too soon.

Relatively dry shade is ideal for cyclamen (hooray, another plant for the short list of dry shade survivors). When planting be aware that the foliage and the flowers come at different times, i.e., fall bloomers produce foliage in the spring, and that for part of the growing season there is nothing to see. Since they grow no more than 6 or 7 inches tall, be careful about swamping them with something else.

By far the best method is to buy potted corms, not dry ones (some bulb catalogs offer dry cyclamen corms). Dry ones can take two or three years to establish.

Arrowhead Alpines (www.arrowheadalpines.com or 517-223-3581) sells potted cyclamen, several cultivars of both species.

Q: Sweet peas are one of my favorite flowers. As a child in Southern California, I planted them in the fall to have a fence covered with flowers in February. Usually it gets too hot, too fast for them here in Pennsylvania. Not so this year. I planted them March 15 (in that early warm dry spell) and the long cool spring and summer gave me weeks of sweet peas. But I can't count on this luck. Is it possible to plant sweet peas in the fall in Pennsylvania and expect them to come up in the spring?

- Winifred Scherrer
A: That's the rap on sweet peas for our part of the continent: too hot. Well, yes, if you're (a) growing varieties developed in the land of sweet pea devotion, England, or (b) expecting your garden to look the same from April to October.

So, acquire seeds labeled "heat resistant." Burpee carries at least one heat-resistant strain each year.

Fall sowing will work, provided you have good drainage so they don't get too wet. One recommendation I've read is to dig a 5- or 6-inch-deep furrow, put sand in the bottom half, then fill with soil and plant the seeds. With fall planting, there's no need to soak the seeds, which is recommended for spring sowing. Wait until November to plant them - to avoid the possibility of germination before winter. Sweet peas can take the cold, though an untimely long warm spell in January, prompting germination, followed by a deeply wintry February might be too extreme. A Philadelphia friend of mine has grown sweet peas for years by just letting them self-sow.

As you well know, we're not on the California coast nor in the English dales, and summer heat usually arrives in June. At that point sweet peas will rapidly decline - leaving room for hyacinth bean vine, or potted mandevilla (getting cheap at the big box stores by mid-June).

An important note: Don't grow eating peas near sweet peas and then save the seed of either. You'll get a useless mongrel.

Here are two other sources for sweet pea seeds, one from each coast: Heaven Enchanting Sweet Peas of Sebastopol, Calif. (www.enchantingsweetpeas.com or 800.371.0233) and Sweet Pea Gardens of Surry, Maine (www.sweetpeagardens.com or 207-667-6751).

- Michael Martin Mills

Send questions to Michael Martin Mills, The Inquirer, Box 41705, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101 or gardenqanda@earthlink.net. Please include locale. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.

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