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As we approach the longest day of the year on June 21, the plants in your garden are growing to beat the band.

We encourage you to get out and enjoy the show. It is changing every day, though subtly. Your daily tours of your gardens and condo balconies reveal untold secrets, including new flowers that seemingly appear over night.

One of the best ways to enjoy the flowers in your garden is to cut them and bring them indoors, where you live. Having some “cutting flowers” indoors is a treat for everyone greeted by their colour and fragrance.

This is a perfect time of year to get many flowering plants into your garden or containers, or sow seeds that will produce an abundance of long stem, often fragrant blooms for use all season long. Here is our list of the top 10:

1. Calendula. Pot marigold. An old-fashioned annual that your grandparents may have planted in a row in their vegetable gardens. Sow from seed now in a sunny position and in six to eight weeks you will have brilliant orange or yellow flowers suitable for cutting. Cut the stem deeply at first to encourage more flowers. These grow 20 to 30 centimetres tall.

2. Cosmos. Also sown directly in the soil, cosmos matures to about 1-1/2 metres, and produces an abundance of bright, hot-coloured flowers in eight weeks from seeding. Cut as often as you please, as they are prolific. Pollinating insects love cosmos. Needs lots of sun.

3. Sunflowers. Start sunflowers by seed out of doors in the sunniest spot in your garden. They germinate in just a week at this time of year and grow like stink. Blooms occur in late summer or early fall and attract bees while in flower, and songbirds as they go to seed. Cut some of the long stem flowers before then to enjoy indoors.

4. Rudbeckia. Plant out now for perennial colour in August and September. It’s a hardy coneflower that clumps over time and produces more flowers each year. The award-winning Goldstrum rudbeckia will bloom for up to 10 weeks. They grow up to 120 cm high and need sun.

5. Shasta daisy. Very popular as a reliable garden perennial and cut flower. They’re so easy to grow that the saying “pushing up daisies” suggests they grow naturally over us when we die and are buried. Hmmm. We will enjoy ours in the garden for now, thank you very much. About a metre high, sun. Look for award-winning Becky.

6. Scabiosa. Do not let the name fool you — this is a handsome perennial with blue or purple pompom flowers on long, 20- or 30-cm stems. We love it. Sun to part shade.

7. Zinnias. An annual flower that produces all summer and into the early fall. For the best cutting flowers choose the tall growing “cactus” flowering varieties. A metre high or more, in a sunny spot.

8. Bee balm. Monarda. Easy-to-grow perennial featuring red or magenta flowers that attract bees and other pollinating insects. Adds a light, sweet scent to a bouquet. A metre high, clumps that get bigger each year in the garden. Sun.

9. Nigella. Love-in-a-Mist or Devil-in-the-Bush (who comes up with these names?). Looks great in the flower garden, best grown from seed directly sown in the garden or container. Adds a blowsy effect to any garden. About 50 cm, in sun.

10. Yarrow. A winter-hardy perennial that will produce for many years. Flat-faced flowers in bright, primary colours including red, yellow and orange. Thrives in a dry location. Sun, 40 to 60 cm.

A tour around your favourite garden retailer, and one last browse through the seed racks, can produce some colourful results for your cutting garden.

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