Growing spaces: ground

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.

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

One of the three fruits of triphala; a large deciduous tree of the sub-Himalayan tract.

The third triphala fruit, from a broad-crowned tree of dry deciduous forest.

A white-rooted asparagus of the north-western hills, grown on terraces and bunds.

A thorny desert shrub whose resin has been traded for millennia; now endangered.

A monsoon-flowering lily of the western hills, grown for its white tuber cluster.

A dry-hill root used to colour oil a deep red; slight above ground, tough below.