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Carterton is Oxfordshire's second-largest town — a largely planned settlement that grew up around RAF Brize Norton in the Cotswold Water Park area west of Witney, its residential streets and community facilities surrounded by the limestone plateau farmland of the upper Thames catchment. The Cotswold Water Park's chain of flooded former gravel workings lies just to the south-west, their willow-fringed banks and unmanaged scrub margins providing an unusual late-summer forage mosaic: purple loosestrife, water-mint and willowherb on the water margins, bramble on the drier spoil-bank edges, and ivy on the old stone walls of Brize Norton village. The surrounding limestone grassland and arable fields carry hawthorn, field maple and clover in a strong June to July flow.

Spring opens on blackthorn, hawthorn and cherry plum along the stone hedges of the Cotswolds fringe and the chalk lynchets of the Vale. Oilseed rape is locally significant in Cherwell and South Oxfordshire. Beech in the Chilterns contributes to a huge honeydew-flavoured June flow some years, while lime avenues fill central Oxford and the larger market towns. Bramble, rosebay willowherb and field bean carry July; ivy along the Thames valley walls and the old college gardens closes the year.