its a biennial ...

so its hard to find blooming plants for any given season ...

i spread some seed on my sand.. 20 years ago .. and its still rambling around the beds .. free seeding itself.. but not in an aggressive way ... imo ... it has no special requirements ...

i would just find a plant in seed... ask permission to take some .. and go throw them where you want them for next year ...

with the silvery fuzzy leaf ... its pretty easy to ID them when they sprout ...

and if you have a friend with babe seedlings ... maybe you can get a couple of the first year plants.. that will bloom next year ...

ken

ps: sometimes it easier to find plants.. if yo use the latin name .... which i see.. they changed.. so good i didnt tell you what i thought it was ... lol ..

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rose+campion&t=ffcm&ia=about

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Silene+coronaria+seedlings&t=ffcm&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

It's a short lived perennial. Easy from seed. It self sows with abandon. Good drainage, plenty of sun. Mine grows only in the cracks between paving stones. It never seeds itself into the actual beds. I have 'Oculata' which I find less gaudy then the type. It comes pretty true from seed. Either with the pink eye or just white.

I babied a wild white campion that was growing on the edge of the road until it was big enough to transplant! ha It has come back three years, but no sign of it yet this year.

Also was gifted a bright orange campion but it died out after a couple years. A rose color sounds very pretty.

Rose Campion refers to a specific species, Lychnis or Silene coronaria. It is not just a pink version of white campion, Silene latifolia. Your bright orange campion might have been Lychnis arkwrightii.

Had Silene (Lychnis) coronaria in several perennial beds, but got fed up with deadheading it to prevent excessive reseeding. Still have Silene (Lychnis) flos-jovis which is a quite similar looking campion and which may be more perennial.

Availability - or lack of it - may depend on how the plant behaves in your area. Here, it is not much more than a weed, self-seeding so rampantly as to form dense colonies that encroach on and overwhelm less aggressive plants.

Much like Centranthus ruber/red valerian, forget-me-nots and dame's rocket, which also self-seed to the point of being garden pests, rose campion is seldom seen for sale in my area nurseries.

Rose, white, orange, the blooms all look the same to me. (the orange has darker foliage).

I agree that they really love growing between stones, and they look right at home there. They have a tendency to survive and linger on in some form or another for decades. I wish my Silenes were that tenacious.

"Rose, white, orange, the blooms all look the same to me."

The flower form of Lychnis coronaria - regardless of color - looks almost nothing like the flowers of L. arkwrightii, L. chalcedonica, L. coronata or any of the other red/orange flowered species. Neither does the foliage.

Thanks all, I will order some seeds and see how it goes!

If you had not tried wintersowing in a milk jug, it is sooooooo easy and rose campion, Silene/Lychnis coronaria, is very very very easy to grow that way. And, the seedlings are so much easier to transplant in the garden that a larger rootball from a nursery. If you'd like something beyond the standard magenta, try Swallowtail Garden Seeds for a pink/white bloom called 'Occulata.' Swallowtail has a large selection of non-standard seeds, but sometimes the seed count is lower than other vendors. They usually have the standard pink, as well--not sure why they don't now.

The botanical name for rose campion is Lychnis Coronaria