It all happens at once with sweet william. Stems of fully-open flowers are ready for cutting at the same time, young plants that will produce next year’s flowers are now ready for planting out.

Biennial sweet william are classic cottage garden plants. The ease with which they can blend into mixed borders ensures their popularity.

Bees and butterflies are fond of single-flowered varieties which provide an accessible source of nectar – it’s always good to choose varieties of plants with single rather than double flowers if you have bees and other insects in mind.

Best of all, sweet william blossom is deliciously fragrant; a bunch of freshly-cut flowers will fill a room with the aroma of cloves and vanilla.

Traditionally, sweet william seed is sown in May in trays of compost which are then placed in a cold frame where seed will germinate. Young seedlings are potted up, grown on throughout summer, and then planted out in the garden in autumn in the place where they are to flower in the following year.

I find, however, that the timing of this method is not really suitable here in the north of Cumbria where winters usually bring a combination of cold and wet which can be lethal to the roots of very young plants. I have had much more success by sowing seed in March and then planting out young plants at the beginning of July. They are then more well-established and robust, and better equipped to cope with the winter months.

It is difficult to be certain about the naming of sweet william. How did sweetly fragrant flowers, usually in shades of lilac, pink and red, come to have such a masculine name? It seems nobody can agree on this.

We do know that sweet william is native to southern Europe and has been cultivated in England since the 1600s. Its botanical name, Dianthus barbatus, may shed a little light on the mystery. Dianthus means flower of the gods, and barbatus can be loosely translated as bearded.

For a few years in Scotland, it became known as stinking billy – a purposeful insult to William, Duke of Cumberland, who defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

Once it is planted out, sweet william is not difficult to maintain. If grown for cutting, young plants can be planted in rows fairly closely together; this not only provides a bright carpet of blossom but also helps to supress the growth of annual weeds between the plants. When they have finished flowering, they can be removed and put on the compost heap.

To get the best from sweet william, it is good practice to put young plants grown for the following year into fresh ground – rotation helps to ensure plentiful nutrients and healthy plants.

There are many varieties to choose from. ‘Auricula Eye’, with clusters of single, brightly coloured blooms on 30-40cm stems is my mainstay. It produces an excellent show for the garden as well as the option for long-stemmed cut flowers.

Every so often, however, I am tempted with ‘Sooty’ or ‘Tuxedo Black’; as you might expect, they both have unusually dusky, brooding flowers with dark purple foliage.