It may be early February, but 10th-grade biology students at Heathwood Hall Episcopal School already have their hands in the dirt, planting trays of dill and peppers that will be ready in early spring.

“Believe it or not guys,” says science teacher, Jim Morris “together you’ve planted almost 100 seed trays.”

Students file out of the classroom and take a spiral staircase down to the school’s Robert Clark Greenhouse, where they will be filling more plastic trays with dirt and making tiny indentations in the soil — all part of the effort to get ready for Heathwood Hall’s April 12 spring plant sale.

Both the sale and the greenhouse lessons are part of a larger “green” initiative at the private school, called School Environmental Education, or SEED.

“The school has always had a deep commitment to environmental education,” said Morris, SEED’s co-director. “But it’s been each individual teacher doing their own project. SEED was created to be an umbrella group to pull all of these activities together.”

Launched last spring, the initiative uses a multipronged approach to coordinate what had become a long list of green projects or ecologically-minded programs, a focus for the school founded in 1951.

A team of 25 — including faculty, administration, student council officers and parents — representing seven subcommittees helps direct the program’s goals and ensure there aren’t redundancies.

“We operate on the premise that everyone takes ownership,” Morris said. “So it’s a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down approach.”

Projects have included conventional green programs, such as community cleanups, compost bins and vegetable and shade gardens. But the SEED team also has employed the unconventional, marrying environmental initiatives with other school programs.

“A huge number of people here have a classic land ethic to protect the environment,” Morris said. “So we have always looked for opportunities to tie all of our programs in together with environmental science.”

Case in point: The spring plant sale not only serves as a lesson in photosynthesis and seed germination — something biology students were studying recently — but also raises funds for those same students to take part in their senior trip to rehabilitate homes on Johns Island in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. The money raised from the sale will go toward paint and building materials.

Biology Buddies, which pairs preschoolers with high school students, is another example of a Heathwood program doing double, even triple, duty.

“Little kids can play in the dirt till the cows come home,” Morris said. “But older kids will get bored after awhile. So we’ve found the combination, with older and younger students together, works well. It’s very productive.”

The kids, Morris said, not only receive a science lesson but gain important socialization skills in the process. It’s a holistic approach that’s become a hallmark of how the school approaches education.

“We do that in various forms here,” Morris said.

The approach seems to be working.

Sophomore Thomas Smith said he didn’t think he would enjoy biology class. The 15-year-old, who tends to lean more toward history and English as his favorite subjects, said he’s since changed his mind.

“I’ve gotten into medicinal plants,” he said. “Like herbal remedies. So this (class) has got me interested in that.”

While Morris and Todd Beasley, the program’s other director, say some of the initiative’s goals may be lofty, ultimately they may prove beneficial to the community as well.

“Jim and I always like to think big,” said Beasley, who teaches fifth-grade science. “So we sometimes have to remind ourselves this has only been the first year.”

In addition to encouraging students to take behaviors such as recycling and planting gardens home to their families, the program helps students rediscover the world around them, Beasley said.

“It’s this idea more or less of a ‘green hour’ to get them outside for an hour,” he said. “One of our goals is to not necessarily say ‘you need to put down the video game’ but just get them thinking about other ways of entertaining themselves and get them reconnected to the outdoors.”

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Heathwood Hall planting seeds of change