A flower so beautiful you can’t help but grow it

Some plants seem destined to end up in our gardens. How else can you describe the phenomenon in which a plant that you’ve only heard of in passing suddenly starts showing up everywhere you look?

This happens to me with alarming regularity, most recently as I gazed over a sea of the most brillant magenta flowers with slightly glaucus foliage playing host to a steady stream of butterflies.

The flower I was admiring along with a large group of visitors at local garden on the Garden Conservancy tour was sweet William catchfly Silene armeria. Typically grown here as an annual, it self-seeds readily, to the point where it is consider invasive in areas.

Although I wasn’t positive this plant drawing the attention of humans and pollinators alike was Silene, I suspected it may be, and not just because I had a vague idea of what it looked like. You see, Silene has been at the front of my mind because I’ve been reading about it everywhere.

There are many types of Silene, but the only one I’ve grown is rose campion (Silene coronaria, also known as Lychnis coronaria, because there seems to be confusion about whether it’s part of the genus Silene or just closely related).

What I’ve been hearing the most about though is that magenta stunner Silene armeria and Silene pendula, which trails over containers or serves as a brilliant pink annual groundcover. One seed company said the ‘Sibella Carmine’ variety cascades over containers and carpets beds with a “tumbling profusion” of flowers.

And if there’s anything I’m looking for in a showstopping annual, it’s tumbling profusion.

Add in a few other characteristics of this Dutch-bred variety, including that it is self-cleaning and not particulary fussy about light, so long as it’s not in full shade, and it seems like an obvious winner.

Silene will bloom early and into the majority of the summer. Most seem to appreciate slightly leaner soil, and good drainage is cumpulsory, but this also makes them drought resistant.

Silene armeria has slightly sticky stems that can snare insects, hence the common name of catchfly. I must take umbrage with the other common name: none-so pretty. Whoever came up with that was clearly in a bad mood.

Given their propensity to reseed, a strict hand might be needed to keep it in check. That has led to problems in some areas where this European native has escaped cultivation and naturalized, potentially endangering native plants.

I’ll be happy to keep it in check in my own garden because growing it seems non-negotiable. The gardening gods have deemed it so.