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Beauly is a small historic town on the Beauly Firth twelve miles west of Inverness, where the River Beauly meets the tidal reaches before entering the firth below the Muirtown Basin. The town takes its name from the French "beau lieu" — beautiful place — a description attributed to Mary Queen of Scots on her visit in 1564 to the Valliscaulian priory whose roofless ruins stand beside the town square. The Beauly valley runs west from the town into Strathfarrar and the Strathfarrar National Nature Reserve, one of the finest remaining tracts of Caledonian pinewood in the Highlands, and the river and its tributaries carry bankside alder, willow and elder forage from May through August. The Beauly Firth saltmarsh and reedbeds to the east provide coastal forage; the improved farmland of the Black Isle and the Aird gives a reliable oilseed rape and white clover flow in the summer months. Sycamore on the older village lane trees and in the priory grounds provides the main early-summer forage in the town itself.

The season arrives late — gorse and broom on the Moray coast and sycamore in sheltered valleys begin May. Raspberry (cultivated and wild) on Easter Ross gives a substantial early flow. The Highland defining crop is ling heather on the huge moors of the central, eastern and western Highlands — the finest UK heather honey with a distinct red-amber set and jelly texture, still commercially worked. Bell heather, bilberry and upland herbs supplement. Coastal sea-thrift and ivy on lochside cottages close a short, high-quality year.