Community Read
In 2025, we again join local libraries and community partners for the eleventh year of the Longwood Gardens’ Community Read — a program designed to encourage reading for pleasure and start a conversation. For the upcoming year, we offer programs connected to The Extraordinary Gardener, the selection for younger readers.
The Extraordinary Gardener
For younger readers: The Extraordinary Gardener by Sam Boughton is a beautifully illustrated story about a young boy seeking color in a dreary world. Joe is a boy just like any other, but with a bigger imagination. He spends his time imagining a wonderful, colorful world filled with exotic plants and unusual animals. One day, Joe decides to plant a seed on his balcony, and when he least expects it, he sees that the seed has taken root and turned into the most beautiful tree.
Mobile Museum Outreach Program
In the children’s book, The Extraordinary
Gardener, Joe has a wild and wondrous imagination. One day, he has the seed
of an idea that will take his world from ordinary to extraordinary.
As part of the Longwood Gardens Community Read Program, the Delaware Museum of Nature and Science comes to you. This program is great for organizations such as libraries, daycares, after-school groups, and classrooms.
DelMNS’s Mobile Museum will come to you at your location to lead a program based on the book The Extraordinary Gardener by Sam Boughton. Through interactive participation we’ll read the story and follow Joe, he lives in a grey world, but through dedication brings color into his own life and his community! After the story, we’ll plant a seed to take home. While your seed physically grows, we hope the love of the natural world will grow too! Be prepared to get dirty hands!
$190 per program, maximum 25 participants. Audience: Children, families.
