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Beaufort is a former ironworks and colliery settlement on the western rim of the Ebbw Faw valley, perched on a shelf between the valley floor and the open moorland plateau of Mynydd Llangynidr. The village takes its name from the Beaufort ironworks established in the early nineteenth century, whose legacy survives in the rows of ironworkers' cottages running along the valley-side contour. The moorland immediately above Beaufort carries ling heather, bilberry and gorse, making this one of the most accessible upland-forage locations in Blaenau Gwent; hives on the plantation edges here can work the heather from late July. Sycamore and hawthorn cover the valley side below the village, and the reclaimed tip ground on the Ebbw Vale side holds dense bramble through summer.

Sycamore is the dominant May flow tree throughout the borough, flowering profusely on the valley sides from Blaina to Brynmawr. Hawthorn on the valley-rim hedgerows and blackthorn in the gorse-edge scrub supplements the April flow. Bramble is exceptionally dense on the extensive reclaimed colliery tip and forestry margins — a prolonged and reliable mid-summer crop — and rosebay willowherb adds colour and forage on every disturbed bank. White clover covers the playing fields and recreation grounds of the valley-floor settlements; the Clydach Gorge ash woods below Brynmawr add a limestone-flora element unusual in the valleys. Ling heather and bilberry on the plateau above 350 metres at Beaufort, Brynmawr and Tredegar give accessible late-summer heather forage rarely available this close to a valley settlement. A strong ivy flow on old stone terraces and chapel walls closes the year in October.