Regions: North India

Host plant for tiger butterflies — plant one and the caterpillars arrive.

The desert milkweed, smaller than gigantea and even tougher.

Edible flowers and leaves, and a magnet that pulls aphids off your vegetables.

Opens in full sun on a terrace where nothing else will survive noon.

Flowers every day of the year and asks for nothing. Indigenous to the deccan.

Flame of the forest — bare branches and orange flowers through the dry spring.

Neat glossy shrub with pinwheel white flowers; the easiest good hedge there is.

Orange jessamine — flushes of scented white flowers after every rain.

The garden chrysanthemum of the north-Indian winter, sold by the crate at Diwali.

Bulbs planted in March give heavily scented white spikes through the monsoon.