Regions: North India

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

Kagzi lime — the single most useful pot tree for an Indian household.

Mosambi — a grafted tree in a big tub crops well in the west and centre.

Purple fruit in June and dense evergreen shade for the rest of the year.

The fruit of the dry west, cropping where irrigation is impossible.

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.

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