At a Renton school, students are learning how to protect Puget Sound through planting gardens.

“Puget Sound is dying the death of 1,000 cuts,” said Nisa Karimi, a coordinator with the Friends of the Cedar River Watershed (FCRW). “Stormwater is the greatest threat to Puget Sound.”

The non-profit visited Hazen High School for a day to help about eight students build a garden that traps stormwater from the roof and nearby parking lot.

Instead of running into the Cedar River, the polluted water is naturally filtered by plants and soil.

The school is one of the first eight to receive a rain garden, which the non-profit is also using as an educational tool.

“We are building rain gardens to act as living labs,” Karimi said.

She took about 500 students through a tour of the school, showing them where runoff flows into storm drains. Students grimaced at grey residue piling below a rain spout and counted the places rain gardens could go.

“I want you to start thinking like water,” she said, before explaining how new ideas, like pervious pavement, can help the water filter back into the earth.

At the same time about eight students from Hazen’s Earth Corps club built the garden and taught their peers about the project.

“We were sold on the idea from a teacher,” said senior Kasey Koenig. “You can always do something to help a park, but it’s more fun to help our own school.”

There are two ways to increase sustainable practices, policy and education, said FCRW’s Peter Donaldson. “(Education) may seem slow, but it’s actually faster.”

When people understand new sustainable systems, they’ll be more receptive to changes, he said.

“It’s apolitical,” he said. “It’s just teaching students about systems that make communities more livable.”

During lunch, he sat with dirty knees extended on a bed of pine needles and discussed green chemistry with a couple Earth Corps students.

“I’m really into chemistry and biology and I find this really interesting,” said sophomore Priscilla Yu.

Donaldson hopes to draw a group of student leaders from the projects to participate in the Watershed Report, an annual study on how well communities along the Cedar River are implementing sustainable practices.

“Every sustainable action ultimately hits the landscape and ends up in Puget Sound,” he said.

The rain garden was paid for by a group of grants given to FCRW.

While professionals did most of the technical work, students stacked boulders and filled the dirt with a variety of plants known for breaking down oil.

Two down spouts connect to the garden on one side, while holes were cut in the concrete curb to allow runoff from a student parking lot.

The garden only treats a fraction of the school’s stormwater, but it’s a start. Puget Sound is dying from 1,000 cuts, which also means it needs 1,000 bandages, Donaldson said.

“If everyone helped in some way, it’d be a major impact,” Yu said.