The garden and H2Oh! water play area are open seasonally. Access to Our Backyard is included with general admission. Please note, Our Backyard closes fifteen minutes prior to the Museum each day.

2026 Schedule

Our Backyard garden area will open for the season on May 2, 2026
H2Oh! Watering Our Backyard will open for the season on June 6, 2026.

(Please note, this exhibit may temporarily close due to weather concerns to ensure the safety of our visitors.) 

Our Backyard is an interactive outdoor exhibition that invites visitors to create and answer questions about the natural environment using all their senses. Visitors to Our Backyard will be able to observe, make and understand the connections between plants, animals, weather, water, soil and themselves to gain a more personal appreciation for their world. The outdoor space includes a gravel pit, sand pit, picnic table, herb garden, flower ‘bed’, sunflower house featuring flowers native to Long Island, evaporating art easels, a mud kitchen, and a permaculture vegetable garden. 

Kindly help us maintain a safe and clean environment by eating and drinking only at the designated tables in our seasonal exhibit space.

Our Backyard is the setting for several summer workshops for visitors, such as our Citizen Science Monarch Monitoring Project. Each week, visitors are invited to study monarch butterflies in LICM’s Milkweed Garden by measuring plants, rainfall, and monarch eggs. This important data will be sent scientists to help them understand butterfly migration and help conserve this species.

Visitors are also invited to take part in LICM’s STEM Explorers program, powered by the Green Teens, and dig deeper into the unknown through learning experiences on alternative energy, water, habitats, and more. Themes change weekly. This program is supported by National Grid.

 

A child standing outside holding a drum mallet while playing a small metal drum.

Musical elements encourage creativity inspired by our natural world.

Two children standing outside painting on slate easles with water and a brush.

Experiment with evaporating art as images made with water disappear before your eyes. Does it make a difference if you paint in the shade or the sun?

H2Oh! Water Play

A child standing under a metal pipe frame sprinkling water from multiple angles.

Enjoy this immersive experience that sprays from all directions!

A child standing at a metal water table with thin PVC pipes pouring water onto her hands.

Pipe works provides the tools to explore water flow, force and gravity through water play.

A child standing in the H2Oh! area using a pulley system to get water in a metal bucket from a small rock well.

Make predictions and test your theories in the H2Oh! section of Our Backyard.

Two children wearing bathing suits in the H2Oh! area playing at the water table with metal buckets and plastic boats.

Water play encourages the refinement of eye/hand coordination through pouring, squeezing, stirring and squirting.

What You Learn:

  • Direct observation of natural forces
  • Nature advocacy through exposure
  • Seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting
  • Water flow/water play (summer season)

Continue the Fun at Home

Go on a nature walk in your own neighborhood. Explore the outdoors using your senses. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What can you build or create using natural materials you find on your walk?

Take photographs of your favorite flora you discovered at the Museum. Can you find these plants out in your own neighborhood? 

Inspiration

Richard Louv Last Child in the Woods