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Tomintoul is one of the highest villages in the Scottish Highlands, sitting at around 345 metres in the upland Glenlivet district on the southern fringe of Moray, within the Cairngorms National Park boundary. Planned in the eighteenth century and set out as a single long street on the moorland plateau, it is surrounded on all sides by heather moorland — Calluna vulgaris from late July through September — on the Braes of Glenlivet and the upland grazings of the Crown estate. The Conglass Water and the River Livet run through sheltered gullies below the village with alder, elder and gorse on the banks. Oilseed rape fields appear on the lower-lying Livet and Don valleys a few miles below, and the Glenlivet distillery estate brings further managed grassland and hedgerow into the district.

Oilseed rape on the coastal Laigh of Moray is the defining spring flow: dense sowings between Elgin, Forres and Fochabers flower from late April and can fill a super rapidly on warm days. White clover follows on the improved grassland and roadside verges of the coastal plain through June and July. Sycamore is the dominant woodland forage tree, supplemented by hawthorn on field margins and elder along burn and river corridors. The heather of the Speyside hills and the Dava Moor above Grantown provides a significant late-summer crop accessible from Forres, Keith and the inland villages. Raspberries are grown commercially in parts of the Spey valley, adding a nectar source less common elsewhere in Scotland.