I often think of June as the home gardener's royal month, for the pleasures that fill its days are fit for kings and queens. The garden glows with freshness -- shrubs bursting with new shoots, annual flowers starting their first fine flush of bloom, vegetable plots like soft, restful waves of green, fruiting trees and bushes laden with the promise of newly formed fruit.

Many gardens will be filled with regal scents in June. The peony bushes will be heavy with big blossoms to gather for bold and fragrant arrangements in the house. The varied sweet and haunting fragrances of roses will be at their most pronounced this month as most types come into full bloom. On sunny days there is the strong, warm, aroma of vanilla and honey from the bearded irises, and the hot, spicy perfume of pinks.

Color fills the June garden as many plants come into bloom. A sampling from the perennial garden: columbine, hardy geranium, sedum, lotus, hardy gloxinia (Incarvillea), rock rose (Helianthemum), shasta daisy, lady's mantle, foxglove, daylily, and delphinium. June brings the first lilies and the last spring flowerbulbs. In the herb garden sage and thyme are in bloom.

Strawberries are a regal treat in June. One of the home gardener's most exquisite pleasures is savoring a fresh-plucked, sun-warmed berry on the spot. Growers of home garden vegetables will be cashing in on their earlier labors as fresh, vital foods flow from garden to table -- lettuce and spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, and sometimes even the first pickings of sugar and shell peas, and carrots planted early in frames or under row covers.