Orcas middle school teacher Laura Tidwell brought her leadership class to play in the mud at Eastsound’s new constructed wetland today, designed to provide ecologically friendly stormwater treatment to 40 percent of Eastsound’s winter runoff.

The students spent two hours planting sedges in the bare earth. There will be hundreds of shrubs, bulbs and trees installed in the ground this fall. The plants will be given the winter to sink down their roots before stormwater runoff is shunted into the area next fall for treatment.

The fallen trees strategically laid out along the bottom of the wetland are intended to provide habitat for wetland creatures like frogs, said a volunteer working on the site.