ENVIRONMENTAL issues prompted people of all ages to brave a wet and chilly weekend and carry out good works in Baildon and Saltaire.

A grand litter pick organised by new community group the Aire Debris Removal Initiative began in Roberts Park at 10am today and gathered more than 100 bags of rubbish caused by recent floods.

"It was a fantastic turnout and we had some 80 people come along," said organiser Mat Holloway.

"There were families and a totally diverse mix of people and we all walked up the riverbank to the footbridge just below Hirst Wood, crossed over and came back down again.

"And we collected all sorts of rubbish thrown up by the floods, part of a bath tub, an old TV bits of bikes, doors, fluorescent tubes and even part of an oven, as well as lots of plastic.

"There is still some litter left in the trees and hard to get to places, but it's true to say most of the reachable rubbish on that stretch has now been cleared away.

"It was an excellent effort by everyone," said Mr Holloway.

AireDRI now plans to do further litter sweeps over the next few weeks, cutting back to probably once a month once most of the flood rubbish has been removed.

Meanwhile, youngsters were in action at the Denso Marston nature reserve between the Aire at Baildon which was totally flooded at Christmas.

Members of the reserve's Spiders group had the task of planting a new mini-orchard on land which has been enriched by all the river silt.

"The kids really enjoyed it and we created two little orchards," said reserve warden Steve Warrillow.

"We received a grant from The Tree Council Orchard Windfalls Fund to buy the trees.

"Following on from the devastation caused by the flood we felt like it was time to do something to move the reserve forward and look positively towards the future.

"And so we planted 14 trees, three species of English apple, Bramley, Katie and Sunset and two English pears, Conference and Beth.

"We deliberately picked native trees as so many hundreds of old English orchards have been lost forever during the last few years.

"We've noted down the positions of who planted which trees and they will go on our map so they can monitor them in years to come.

"It's obviously educational in that the children can study how trees grow and all the natural life that surrounds them.

"And of course they'll be able to come back to the reserve in the future and pick or collect fruit from trees they've planted themselves, which is great.

"Another thing we did was to "wassail" the trees by pouring apple juice over their roots after we'd planted them - which slightly mystified some of the children!" Mr Warrillow said.