Once upon a time, in a city kissing the coast of a Great Lake, magical storybook gardens came to life. Within the gardens’ gates, there lived a million stories. Children rode on the Magic School Bus, met the Lorax and sat beneath The Giving Tree; adults walked hand in hand with smiles lighting up their faces, transported back to simpler times.
The gardens aim to inspire a love for reading and nature in visitors both young and young at heart — and when those visitors depart, the magic stays with them, even beyond the gardens’ gates.
At Bookworm Gardens, fairy tales don’t end when you close the book.
Hard work from many dedicated people made these botanical gardens based on children’s literature what they are today. Because of the love poured into its creation and continued nurturing, Bookworm Gardens in Sheboygan is more alive than ever as it celebrates its 15-year anniversary. The gardens foster a love for stories and nature among children and adults alike, blooming for generations to come.
“Whether you are a kid or once were a kid, you can find the nostalgia that is just planted in here,” says Dana Elmzen, marketing and communications director of Bookworm Gardens, “and it just blooms with the little bit of curiosity.”
A long, long time ago …
The idea for Bookworm Gardens first sprouted when founder Sandy Livermore realized her passion for gardening.
After graduating from UW–Madison in 1982 with a master’s degree in business administration and management, Livermore embarked on a career in business that brought her all the way to New York. In 1987, Livermore and her family moved back to Wisconsin, and she took some time away from her career to stay at home with her children.
It was then that Livermore discovered her green thumb and was inspired to pursue a degree in landscape design.
Livermore dreamed big, and she soon opened up her own landscape design firm. In July 1999, she attended a conference at Michigan State University — the location of the first children’s garden in North America.
During her visit, Livermore witnessed a group of teenage volunteers sit down and begin to read aloud to some of the children in the garden.
“It felt like it was worms to the surface after a rain,” Livermore says. “[The children] just appeared, as if from nowhere, to be read to by teenagers.”
It was then that Livermore had an aha moment: Combining the idea of a garden designed for kids with the read-aloud she witnessed, she decided to create gardens based on children’s books. The location for her ambitious new project would be where she lived: in the northeastern Wisconsin city of Sheboygan.
The first step in Livermore’s plan was starting a gardening group at the local Pigeon River Elementary School. With help from the kids, she designed multiple gardens for the students to enjoy.
One, called the Pizza Garden, grew vegetables commonly used to top pizzas to be harvested by “Green Gang” students. As she realized that many kids didn’t realize where their food came from, Livermore’s philosophy — that children could learn a lot through nature — was strengthened. She set out to garner more support for her literature gardens.
Over the next decade, more than 1,000 people from Sheboygan County chipped in to help Livermore create the gardens — something she notes with pride. Sheboyganites who believed in Livermore’s vision helped clear the acquired land, plant fauna, and build and paint the structures for the gardens.
A teacher from a local high school even had his technical education class build the barn for the Farm Gateway area of Bookworm Gardens. The Sheboygan County Home Builders Association and Master Gardener Association also donated their labor to install the barn’s roof, windows and cupola, Livermore says.
After countless hours and lots of help from the Sheboygan community, Bookworm Gardens opened its gates in 2010 — 11 years after the original idea was planted in Livermore’s mind.
“I don’t know if this would have happened in another city. I just don’t,” Livermore says. “It’s a really special town.”
The first 15 chapters
When Bookworm Gardens opened, its 65 book-themed gardens occupied only 7.5 acres of land, but over the course of its first 15 years, it has grown to include 83 themed gardens, with plans to expand on 30 acres of recently acquired land across the street, according to Livermore and Bookworm Gardens’ executive director, Elizabeth Wieland.
Structures and statues that depict scenes from classic stories — like the Once-ler’s Thneed factory from “The Lorax” or Humpty Dumpty perched on a wall — mingle with the gardens’ natural fauna. For example, the “Pinkalicious” garden is enhanced with real pink flowers.
Some of the original stories that inspired gardens are “The Magic School Bus” and “The Three Little Pigs.” Walking toward the entry gate, a big yellow school bus with polka-dotted wings welcomes visitors, and within the gardens, The Three Little Pigs’ straw, stick and brick houses invite children to crawl inside.
Visitors can revisit the pages of the stories portrayed in the gardens’ scenes, too: In each “Gateway,” or themed section of Bookworm Gardens, there’s a brick pillar containing a metal box, each stocked with the books portrayed in that area.
During the design process, Livermore says she’d imagined 50 visitors per day and 100 per day on weekends — well below the 800 to 1,000 who actually visit Bookworm Gardens on its busiest days in the summer, Wieland says.
“The garden itself spoke to this community,” Livermore says, “and the garden dreamed way, way bigger than that.”
The small-town community gardens grew far beyond the scope of what Livermore imagined. An impact report stated Bookworm Gardens welcomed 78,223 visitors in 2024, hailing from 47 states and seven countries.
“Whether you are a kid or once were a kid, you can find the nostalgia that is just planted in here.”
As they’ve physically expanded, the gardens have also grown to host a variety of events and programs. The budding nature preschool program, which takes enrolled children through a seasonal, nature-based curriculum, took off in 2022.
The preschool director of Bookworm Gardens, Bianca Beilke, has seen how the program furthers Bookworm Gardens’ mission as both a teacher and parent: Her 5-year-old son, Lennon, entered the program at age 3.
Ever since enrolling, Lennon has developed a noticeable love of nature and the outdoors, Beilke says. He even gets concerned if a bug appears to be hurt, and he’s always trying to “rescue” them.
“I feel like it’s directly a result of his learning about nature and how to care for things big and small,” Beilke says. “Seeing that empathy … for something like a bee or a tiny bug is pretty cool for a child that small.”
The gardens invite visitors young and old to enjoy its stories. Executive Director Elizabeth Wieland recalls watching an elderly couple explore the gardens. Whenever they could, the two would hunt for the copy of the story from each garden and sit down on a bench, where the husband would read each story aloud to his wife, she says.
“There’s something really special that happens when an adult can connect with that childlike sense of wonder that they had when they were a kid,” Wieland says. “It loosens something. It reinvites imagination and whimsy into your world, and it just makes for a happier person.”
ONGOING HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Nostalgic as they may be, these literature gardens are far from being stuck in the past. As Bookworm Gardens celebrates its anniversary, it looks forward to the exciting future that includes the addition of 30 more acres to the gardens — a major project that could take years to complete, Livermore says.
“Just like nature and just like our gardens, we’re constantly growing and evolving,” Elmzen says.
For now, visitors can continue to enjoy the small but mighty changes that occur each year at Bookworm Gardens — like this year’s Anniversary Garden, which highlights the impact of the gardens’ first 15 years and pays tribute to Livermore.
Today, Livermore enjoys a more laid-back role as a weeder for the gardens. She witnesses what the gardens mean to visitors as they interact with the books and plants. Once, she heard a father telling his son how he’d helped build the barn in his technical education class.
Just as the gardens had blossomed, so had the people who helped create them.
In many ways, Bookworm Gardens is writing its own fairy tale.
“People will protect what they love,” Wieland says. “I hope the long-term ripple effect is that we’re growing people who are lifelong lovers of books and nature.”
Explore Bookworm Gardens
Map by MADALYN SCHARRER and GRETA BOATCHER
Welcome to Sheboygan’s Bookworm Gardens! Inside the gates, stories come to life. Visitors have the opportunity to experience classic childhood literature taking physical form in structures, statues and nature related to different stories. Interact with this map to see some of the ways the magic happens.
MAP PHOTOS BY MADALYN SCHARRER
Feature photo: Children listen to “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” read aloud in the corresponding garden. Photo by Jonás Tijerino