Goals: healing

The fastest useful tree there is — 3 m in a year, edible leaves and pods.

Plant single cloves in October and lift whole bulbs in March.

A Himalayan ginger relative with scented white flowers and aromatic rhizomes.

Palmarosa — a scented grass of the central hills, distilled for its rose-like oil.

A sedge most people fight as a weed, though its tuber is an old perfume material.

A tough climber that fruits through the worst humidity of the year.

The lichen of the spice box — not planted, but a reason to keep old trees standing.

A hill herb of stream banks with aromatic roots and heads of small white flowers.

Camphor basil — a big grey-green bush that fills a terrace with scent.

A riverbank giant with pale bark — a tree for a campus or a colony park, not a pot.