Goals: Grow food

Central India’s most important livelihood tree — flowers, oil and shade.

The fastest usable material on earth; one clump supplies poles for years.

A century-tree with feathery shade and the sourness of half of Indian cooking.

Feathery-leaved and drought-hardy; one grafted tree feeds a household in winter.

A thorny hedge shrub that gives pickling fruit and keeps animals out.

Small sour-sweet berries in May, from a shrub that shrugs off a Delhi summer.

Fruit in March, silkworm leaves all summer, and shade in between.

Two crops a year in the west, and content in a large container.

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

Evergreen, wind-firm and cropping twice a year on the coasts.