Although I have owned quite a few of the Yankee jar candles, I now mainly buy the wax tarts as I find I get easily bored of the scents, and prefer to chop and change rather than stick with one. Last year there was a special offer on website www.yankeedoodle.com whereby you could get one medium jar and a selection of tarts for a bargain price. The list of fragrances to choose from was quite limited and I opted for the Garden Sweet Pea variety simply because I had smelled it in a shop previously and knew I liked it.

As with all Yankee Candles they come in a variety of formats. At the cheaper end of the scale are wax tarts and votives, you can also buy tealights, tumblers and then three sizes of 'house warmer jar'. The house warmer jars are probably the most recognisable format that Yankee Candles come in, and they look like glass sweet jars filled with wax.

This particular candle is a lilac-blue colour, although I was in a branch of Collectables recently and they had this same candle in a much brighter blue shade. I can only assume that the colour varies slightly from batch to batch. The candle has a sticker on the front with a picture of sweet peas and it tells us that it's from the 'floral' fragrance family as if we couldn't already guess. The back of the jar is plain, so if you prefer the label not to be on show you can simply turn it around.

The fragrance of the candle is absolutely lovely. If I'm completely honest, I'm not 100% sure what sweet peas smell like, so I can't say how true to life the scent actually is. The scent of the candle is a very sweet floral, with almost a sugary undertone to it. It's not as strong a floral as some others I've used - it's very subtle and it's the sort of fragrance that lingers gently in the background rather than hitting you in the face the moment you enter a room.

I always place my candle on a heatproof mat to burn it, and I find that the candle burns evenly, and within only around 10 minutes I can smell it filling the room. I like that it's not overpowering or sickly and it burns slowly which means that it lasts a long time. In fact the burn time on a medium jar such as the one I have is supposed to be between 65 and 90 hours. I can't claim to have gone as far as timing it, but I have had this candle since around September time last year, and have probably burned it twice a month since for an average of about 3 hours a time and my jar still looks pretty full, so it is definitely long lasting.

The typical price of Yankee Candle jar candles tends to be £7.99 for a small jar, £15.99 for a medium jar and £17.99 for a large jar, although it's worth shopping round as you can often find good deals. I do think that this is expensive, but given that these candles look pretty and last well, it makes them a bit better value for money. If you're not sure you will like a scent, or just want a cheaper option, you can also buy the tarts for around £1 each or a small sampler candle which tend to cost around £1.60. I'd recommend buying from www.yankeedoodle.co.uk or you may find smaller shops on the high street selling these.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the Garden Sweet Pea fragrance. It smells sweet and fresh but is subtle and not as overpowering or in your face as some of the other Yankee scents. I don't think it's the most special Yankee fragrance out there, but it's very nice all the same, so I think a four out of five stars rating would be well deserved.