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Stevenston is an inland Garnock valley town between Saltcoats and Kilwinning, historically an industrial settlement with a Nobel Explosives factory whose former site is now being redeveloped. The town sits on the western edge of the Garnock valley where the land opens out toward the Clyde coast, surrounded by improved farmland and rough ground. The Garnock Water runs east of the town with willow, elder and himalayan balsam on the banks; the rough ground and naturalising former industrial land to the south of the town carries extensive bramble and rosebay willowherb. Stevenston's suburban gardens carry hawthorn, apple and sycamore; the open farmland north toward Kilwinning 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.