Growing spaces: balcony

A small southern shrub with white flowers, long used for skin preparations.

A dark-stemmed shrub of the wet coasts with traditional joint-pain uses.

A creeping mat for the wet edge of a terrace pond or a bowl garden.

The tea of the Brahmaputra valley — one bush on a balcony is enough for a pot.

Sweet basil — indigenous cultivation across India long before its pizza career.

The ghost chilli of Nagaland — a genuine regional speciality, and ferocious.

A creeping pepper of the eastern and southern forests, with catkin-like spikes.

The paan vine — grown in shaded enclosures across Bengal and the east.

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

Double-lobed aromatic leaves used across the north-east and the far south.