Goals: Flowers & beauty

Red February cups feeding every bird in the neighbourhood at once.

Buransh — scarlet trusses across the mid-Himalaya in March.

The Himalayan cedar — a slow, magnificent, cold-climate conifer.

Grown for fibre and calyces in the west and centre; a striking tall annual.

Desi cotton — the indigenous species, hardier than the imported kinds.

The dye plant of history, nitrogen-fixing and undemanding.

Handsome, thorny and productive on poor dry soil; good in a big pot.

Yellow bells almost all year on a shrub that survives a forgotten terrace.

A sub-Himalayan scrambler with brick-red bracts through the cool months.

The abolí of southern flower markets — orange fans, picked daily.