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Stewarton is a historic bonnet-making town on the Annick Water, five miles north of Kilmarnock in the rolling Ayrshire countryside. The town sits in a productive farming landscape of improved pasture and arable fields threaded with hawthorn hedgerows that give a good spring flow. The Annick Water carries a varied corridor of willow, elder and bramble through the valley; the wooded grounds of Cunninghamhead Estate to the north-west provide lime and sycamore at the season's peak. White clover on the enclosed fields is abundant through June and July, and the rough hill ground west of the town toward Dunlop adds gorse and broom for an early supplement.

Hawthorn is the spring anchor across the Ayrshire lowlands, with hedgerows flowering from mid-May on the enclosed farmland around Kilmarnock, Stewarton and the valley towns. White clover dominates the mid-summer flow on the improved pastures from June through July, supplemented by sycamore and lime in the town parks and estate woodlands — most significantly at Kay Park in Kilmarnock and the Dumfries House policies near Cumnock. Himalayan balsam has colonised the Irvine, Nith and Lugar valley corridors, producing a strong late-summer flow from mid-July into September. Gorse and broom are prevalent on the rough ground above the enclosed farmland through the spring and early summer. Heather begins on the Fenwick Moor, Muirkirk and Cairntable uplands from mid-July, offering a productive moor crop for those who move colonies to the hill.