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Swadlincote is the largest town in South Derbyshire, set on the National Forest fringe between the Trent vale and the Burton-upon-Trent clay belt, where former colliery and pottery land is steadily being replanted with the National Forest. The Derbyshire BKA covers the town, and the surrounding landscape — the young oak and birch woodland of the National Forest plantations on former opencast and colliery land, the Mease and Trent riverside willows and watermeadow margins, the bramble and rosebay willowherb on the ex-mining spoil, and the old orchard remnants of the Gresley and Midway lanes — gives local bees an increasingly productive young-woodland and river-vale season.

Spring opens on blackthorn and hawthorn in the dales, with sycamore and field maple on the valley slopes. Oilseed rape is common in south Derbyshire. The signature flow is high-moorland ling and bell heather across Bleaklow, Kinder Scout, Stanage and Big Moor — thick, amber-cast, and still commercially migrated to. The White Peak adds limestone grassland herbs — wild thyme, knapweed, marjoram — and bilberry grows on the moorland margins. Rosebay willowherb flushes every disused quarry, and ivy closes the year on stone-walled farms.