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Hoddesdon is a market town in the Lee Valley, on the eastern edge of Hertfordshire where the River Lee forms the boundary with Essex. The Lee Valley Regional Park — stretching south from here through a chain of reservoirs, nature reserves and riverside meadows — gives local honey bees access to one of the richest wetland forage corridors in the Home Counties: osier willows and alder along the navigation channel, reed canary grass and meadowsweet on the flood meadows, and the ornamental planting of Rye House and the Dobbs Weir fishery margins. Sycamore and lime dominate the town's older streets; bramble is heavy on the railway embankments; the nurseries and market gardens still operating on the valley floor carry borage and phacelia supplements.

The chalk uplands of the north — around Baldock, Royston and Letchworth — give oilseed rape, sainfoin and a solid hawthorn flow. The southern clay country leans on sycamore, horse chestnut and field maple, with the limes of Hertford, Harpenden and St Albans producing a classic June crop. Ashridge, Tring Park and the Chilterns edge add beech forage. Bramble on the commons and rosebay willowherb along the Lee Valley corridor carry midsummer. Ivy closes a long, productive year.