Rose Campion
Lychnis coronaria
“The most unapologetically bold flower in the cottage garden. Silver-felted leaves, neon-magenta flowers, and it seeds itself everywhere. Let it.”
— ROSIE
Rosie's Take
Rose campion is the flower that breaks every colour rule and gets away with it. That searing magenta-pink — practically neon — against the soft, silvery-white, felted foliage. It should clash with everything. It should look garish and cheap. Instead it looks spectacular, because the silver leaves provide exactly the right foil to make the magenta sing rather than scream.
Lychnis coronaria is a short-lived perennial that behaves like a biennial — it makes a beautiful rosette of woolly, silver-grey leaves in its first year, then throws up branching stems topped with those eye-catching flowers in its second summer. After flowering it often dies, but by then it's scattered seeds everywhere, and a new generation of silver rosettes is already appearing. You plant it once and you have it forever, in places you never expected.
I love the felted texture of the leaves. They feel like the softest fabric — suede, maybe, or the ear of a very patient dog. The silver-grey colour is beautiful in its own right, and the rosettes are handsome enough to earn their place in a border even before a single flower appears. After rain, water sits on the furry surface in perfect silver beads. That alone is worth the price of a plant.
The white form — 'Alba' — is equally gorgeous and easier to combine with other plants if the magenta feels too bold for your border. But I'd encourage boldness. A garden that's afraid of colour is a garden that's afraid of joy, and rose campion is pure, unapologetic, pink-lit joy.
✿ From the folklore cabinet
Lychnis comes from the Greek 'lychnos,' meaning lamp — the woolly leaves were supposedly used as lamp wicks in ancient times. 'Coronaria' means 'used for garlands,' which tells you the flowers were woven into ceremonial wreaths. Rose campion has been grown in British gardens since at least the fourteenth century, making it one of our oldest garden flowers. It was a favourite of the Elizabethans, who called it 'rose of heaven.' The silver felting on the leaves is an adaptation to hot, dry Mediterranean hillsides — it reflects sunlight and reduces water loss, which also happens to make it drought-proof in a British summer.
