Girvan's gardens are modest but lovingly kept, and together they make a pleasant linking route between the sights — which is really how to use them. None is a destination on its own; all of them are worth the two minutes it takes to walk through.
The gardens
- Knockcushan Gardens, beside the harbour — the best of them. Formal bedding, mature trees, benches with a view over the boats, a small aviary that children stop for, and the memorial marking the mound where Robert the Bruce is said to have granted the town its charter in 1328. This was the old hill of justice, where the burgh courts sat in the open.
- Orchard Gardens, off Dalrymple Street — a quiet pocket of seasonal planting and benches, and the place to sit if the seafront is busy.
- The McKechnie Garden, behind the McKechnie Institute — small, and with a pétanque court that almost no visitor knows is there.
- Victory Park — playing fields rather than a garden, and the venue for the Carrick Lowland Gathering in June, with pipe bands, Highland dancing and heavy events. The Rose Gardens there host the Civic Week pet show.
- The Community Garden — volunteer-run, productive rather than ornamental, and host to Tattie Fest in June, the festival celebrating the Ayrshire Epicure potato.
- The seafront green along the promenade, with the boating pond, play park and putting green — the largest open space in the town and where most people actually sit.
Using them
All are free and open access. Together with Stumpy Tower and the McKechnie they make an easy, entirely free hour in the town centre — see free things to do and the heritage trail, which links most of them.
Dogs are welcome. Toilets and free parking are at the harbour, a couple of minutes from Knockcushan Gardens.
For gardens on a grander scale, Culzean's walled garden is twenty minutes north, Rozelle and Belleisle half an hour, and Castle Kennedy and Logan are down in Galloway.
