Every one knows the Guelder Rose, with its round white flower-balls, but the wild shrub of which this is a garden variety is also a valuable ornamental bush and should not be neglected. It is a native plant, growing in damp places, such as the hedges of water-meadows and the sides of streams. The English name is Water Elder. Its merit as a garden shrub does not lie, as in the Guelder Rose, in its bloom, but in its singularly beautiful fruit. This, in autumn, lights up the whole shrub with a ruddy radiance. Grown on drier ground than that of its natural habitat, it takes a closer, more compact form.
[Illustration: _IRISES AND LUPINES IN THE JUNE GARDEN._]
White Broom is in flower from the middle of May to the second week of June. There is a fine Flag Iris of a rich purple colour called "Purple King." It is well to grow it just in front of some young bushes of White Broom. Then, if one of the hybrid Irises of pale lilac colour is there as well, and a bush of _Rosa altaica_, the colour-effect will be surprisingly beautiful. This Rose is the bolder-growing, Asiatic equivalent of our Burnet Rose (_R. spinosissima_), with the same lemon-white flowers. When any such group containing White Broom is planted, it should be remembered that the tendency of the Broom is to grow tall and leggy. It bears pruning, but it is a good plan to plant some extra ones behind the others. After a couple of years, if the front plants have grown out of bounds, the back ones can be bent down and fastened to sticks, so that their heads come in the required places. It is one of the many ways in which a pretty garden picture may be maintained from year to year by the exercise of a little thought and ingenuity. The undergrowth of such a group may be of Solomon's Seal at the back, and, if the bank or border is in sun, of a lower groundwork of Iberis and _Corydalis ochroleuca_, or, if it is shaded, of Tiarella, Woodruff or _Anemone sylvestris_. With these, for the sake of their tender green foliage, there may well be _Uvularia grandiflora_ and _Epimedium pinnatum_.
A wonderful plant of May is the great _Euphorbia Wulfenii_. It adapts itself to many ways of use, for, though the immense yellow-green heads of bloom are at their best in May, they are still of pictorial value in June and July, while the deep-toned, grey-blue foliage is in full beauty throughout the greater part of the year. It is valuable in boldly arranged flower borders, and holds its own among shrubs of moderate size, but I always think its best use would be in the boldest kind of rock-work.