THE banks of the River Marden are set to get a green makeover as volunteers from the Bristol Avon Rivers Trust will plant fifty trees in the area to improve the habitat for Calne's wildlife.

Residents are encouraged to stick their wellies on and grab a spade to help plant the Birch, Aspen and Alder trees along the river bed in Calne on Friday morning meeting at the new steps down to Wessington Park on Brewers Lane at 10am in the final Tesco funded event for the Magnificent Marden project.

"This is the end of the funding by Tesco's Bags for Help initiative where we help make some improvements to the river and surrounding area," catchment restoration project officer Harriet Alvis explained. "We are helping manage the park and we thought it would be nice to plant fifty trees on Friday! It is good to have so many people interested and hopefully the weather will stay nice and sunny."

Since launching the Magnificent Marden project a year and a half ago, volunteers have been busy making improvements to the historic chalk stream and the surrounding area to improve water quality for wildlife and residents and Miss Alvis believes it has had a real impact.

She said: "We have put in in-stream flow deflectors which create different variations of flows and they disperse the sill from the river beds and provide the fish with some protection too.

"We have had lots of volunteers wanting to help with the stream work and we are working closely with two angling groups who have been really helpful. One of their members actually saw Trout spawning in the river. We have definitely seen a localised difference."

Hoping to continue their work on the river and surrounding area, the project officer said the Bristol Avon Rivers Trust is always on the lookout for more funding.

She said: "We are always keeping an eye out for other potential funding to continue the project and as always donations are always welcome. We have also been training local people as river fly monitors, who spot and alert us about any declines in species in the river which may signal a problem. We have some more spaces on courses coming up so if anyone is interested then they can contact me on harriet@bristolavonriverstrust.org."