AFS Lower School students on Wednesday began adding small green plants to the school’s Rain Garden, a large natural filter that is designed to remove pollutants from the water entering Jenkintown Creek.

Students began planting 1,200 small plants, 20 shrubs and four trees in the Rain Garden, a shallow basin that already had a floor of long-rooted meadow grass. The plants and the grass will help filter pollutants such as gas, oil and salt from the water that runs off the parking lot and driveway near the Lower School.

After passing through the Rain Garden, the water will make its way into the creek that flows behind the school.

The Rain Garden, which was created in November, is yet another part of the AFS Outside program, which teaches students to appreciate the outdoors and to be good stewards of the environment.

Susan Harris, project manager for the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, explained to first graders how to snip the thin netting covering the basin, dig a hole in the ground, water the plant and gently tamp down the soil around the new planting.

TTF and Abington Friends School have been partners in creating the Rain Garden and a riparian buffer of 400 trees, shrubs and perennials, which was planted in Ocober 2014 along the banks of the creek.

On Wednesday, the first graders worked in two groups of eight; while one group planted, the other group sat on a tarp and used crayons and construction paper to draw pictures of the plants.

Rosanne Mistretta, Lower School Science Teacher and Director of the AFS Outside program, said first graders, kindergarten students and fourth graders would be doing the planting on Wednesday.

She and other teachers helped the younger students use garden trowels to dig into the ground and work around the rocks buried just below the surface. One student uncovered a long, wiggly earthworm, which brought the planting to a temporary halt as other students drew near to examine the surprise discovery.