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Tilbury is a riverside town east of Grays, dominated by the container port of Tilbury Docks — one of England's most important ports — and Tilbury Fort, a star-shaped artillery fortification where Queen Elizabeth I made her famous Armada speech in 1588. The town itself is a planned mid-twentieth-century settlement on former marshland, surrounded on three sides by the docks, the river and the marshes of the East Tilbury foreshore. The Thames-side location gives local bees access to the sea lavender and sea purslane of the Tilbury and Coalhouse Fort saltmarshes from July, supplemented by the bramble and willowherb of the port margins.

Oilseed rape is grown extensively on the London clay farmland across the northern part of Thurrock, from the plateau above South Ockendon and Aveley down to the river-side holdings around Purfleet and West Thurrock, delivering a strong April flow. Hawthorn is dense along the Thames-side sea walls and in the hedgerow network on the fields between Stanford-le-Hope and Corringham. The Thames Estuary saltmarshes and grazing marsh retained around Mucking, Coalhouse Fort and the western river bank carry sea lavender, sea purslane and glasswort through August — a distinctive estuarine nectar note. White clover fills the rough grassland of road verges and the brownfield margins around the Lakeside area. Bramble and elder are prolific on the embankments of the A13 corridor, the former industrial land around Tilbury Docks and the chalk grassland remnants at West Thurrock. Ivy finishes the season in October on the older brickwork and river-wall structures.