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Kilbirnie is a Garnock valley town in the north of North Ayrshire, at the foot of the Renfrewshire hills where the valley broadens onto the flat plain. The town has a traditional industrial character — thread mills and ironworks — and sits beside Kilbirnie Loch, a shallow loch with reed beds and willow scrub that provides an important local wildlife habitat. The loch margins and the Garnock Water above the town carry good waterside forage of willow, meadowsweet and water mint. The hills above the town to the east — the edge of the Renfrewshire hills — carry heather, gorse and bilberry; Castle Semple Loch and the RSPB reserve are accessible a short distance to the north-east. The enclosed farmland of the valley floor has hawthorn hedgerows and white clover.

Hawthorn is the spring anchor on the Garnock valley field boundaries and the coastal farmland strips from mid-May. White clover dominates the mid-summer flow on the improved pastures around Irvine, Kilwinning and the coastal plain; the Eglinton Country Park lime and sycamore woodland provide the main structured town forage from June through July. Himalayan balsam has colonised the Garnock Water, Annick Water and River Irvine corridors, producing a sustained late-summer flow from mid-July into September. Gorse and broom are prolific on the rough hillside ground above the coast towns; heather starts on the Renfrewshire hill fringe above Beith and Kilbirnie from mid-July. The coastal grassland carries bird's-foot trefoil and sea clover through the full summer months.