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Ardrossan is a coastal town on the Firth of Clyde, the ferry port for Arran and the northernmost of the three linked Garnock valley coast towns with Saltcoats and Stevenston. The town sits between the Castle Hill ruin to the north and the South Crescent beach to the south, with views across the water to Arran. The coastal grassland and the scrub on the Castle Hill carry gorse, broom and sea pink; the Ardrossan Harbour and the inter-tidal margins provide some unusual coastal forage. The Garnock valley farmland inland carries hawthorn hedgerows and improved pasture with white clover; the Horse Isle and Hunterston Sands visible offshore are a reminder of the wide inter-tidal landscape of the outer Clyde.

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.