Gardens of goodwill are blooming across the Island. Studio 904’s Mercer Island salon is working together with members of the Island Learning Garden to publicize this small eden at Island Park Elementary School, and the district’s first rain garden is being created at Mercer Island High School.

Starting April 12, Studio 904 will be selling colorful gift cards, the proceeds of which will go toward the Island Learning Garden, an ecological project designed by Islander Shelly Shay.

Students at Island Park’s garden club named and established the fertile green patch last May. The garden has areas for each grade level to plant and maintain as part of the school’s curriculum.

Studio 904 hopes to raise attention for this project through its “Panda’s Garden” card packages.

A team of Island artists have designed the bright cards, which vary from birthday greetings to celebrations of spring. The card packages can also be purchased through Island Learning Garden’s volunteers.

Meanwhile, the high school’s Committee to Save the Earth students have begun building their campus rain garden. Together with Stewardship Partners and Friends of the Cedar River Watershed, students and faculty are launching the district’s first project to address stormwater runoff.

According to Friends of the Cedar River Watershed, 75 percent of the toxic chemicals flowing into Puget Sound are carried by stormwater that runs off paved roads, parking lots, driveways, rooftops, yards and other developed land. A rain garden is a depressed planting bed that captures and slows stormwater runoff, allowing it to seep into the soil while filtering mud and pollutants such as motor oil and heavy metals out of the water.

The MIHS garden will include special signs educating visitors on the ecological benefits of the project.

For more information on both garden projects, visit http://www.k12.wa.us.