NEW trees will spruce up Worcester’s riverside flood defences, according to the city council.

City council workers have been hard at work over the past four days planting 86 trees along the Hylton Road flood barrier.

The planting is the last stage in Worcester City Council’s programme of riverside improvements and will help recreate a “relaxing riverside park” in the months and years to come, according to Martin Lewis, horticultural officer.

“It will be a really nice promenade for the local residents and university students,” he said.

“Since the bund was completed, you rarely see anybody using the nearby pavement because of the views out over the river and across to the cathedral.”

New shrubs and plants are also going in over the next two weeks between the viaduct and along the length of the bund. This will include 8,750 daffodil bulbs along the pathways.

Among the new young mature trees which will be shooting up over the years to come are yew, silver birch, a disease-resistant variety of elm, a variety of oak which grows up and not out, together with pine, poplar and willow. It will take between 15 and 25 years for the trees to become fully mature, depending on the variety, and should be there in 100 years’ time.