Growing spaces: terrace

Sesame-like seeds used across the eastern Himalaya in chutney and oil.

Timur — the numbing hill pepper of the eastern Himalaya, on a thorny shrub.

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

Grown for the seed that swells in falooda and summer sherbets.

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

Singhara — a floating annual grown in ponds and tanks across the north and east.

A floating fern that fixes nitrogen — fertiliser and fodder that grows itself.

East Indian lemongrass, distilled in the north-east for citral oil.

A few canes in a corner give juice, gur and a green screen by October.

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