About
Olivewood Gardens Youth & Family Classes and Camps offers interactive in-person cooking classes and garden-based activities where participants learn how to use appropriate cooking tools and create fun, seasonal recipes. Activities include making dough and homemade sauce, chopping garden veggies, creating veggie pizzas on the grill, making vegetable fritters with a dip, making veggie sushi with cucumber salad and edamame, making Happy Rice, and making vegetable dumplings. The program also includes outdoor adventure in the garden, story time, farm-to-table snacks, visits to one of their critters, time exploring the garden while tasting and learning together, outdoor exploration, art creation, snack sensations, and exploring nature and food with hands-on activities in the teaching garden and kitchen, along with garden and property tours.
• Ages: 2–12 years old
• Schedule: Options include 1–2 hour classes and events, 1.5 hour Chefcitos and private kids’ cooking classes, 4- or 5-day summer camps running 9:00 am–4:00 pm, and 2-hour family cooking class sessions.
• Price: Chefcitos kids’ cooking classes cost $30 per child with a 20% discount for National City residents, and private kids’ cooking classes are 1.5 hours for up to 14 children at $35 per child or a minimum of $350; a National City resident price is available for certain Family Cooking Class Summer Series sessions for those with a 91950 zip code.
Olivewood Gardens Youth & Family Classes and Camps is part of Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center, which was established in 2008 and offers science-based environmental education and nutrition lessons, hands-on gardening and cooking classes, job skills and leadership development programs for youth, adults, and families, a monthly Open Gardens and Property Tour, a weekly Produce Stand, recipes as a resource, an option to host events at the venue, the Roots For Health monthly giving program, a Family Cooking Class Summer Series with themed veggie-based meals, the Talls & Smalls outdoor adventure in the garden for ages 2–5 with an accompanying adult, the Garden Explorers program for K–6th graders, and summer camps where campers explore nature and food with hands-on activities in the teaching garden and kitchen. Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center’s purpose is to build healthy families and a healthy environment, and it states that it is proud to create an environment to help build confidence in nutrition, environmental, and leadership skills. The organization states that its property acts as a resource for community members to explore health education, environmental stewardship, and community connection, notes that Christy and John Walton donated their home and property to the International Community Foundation with the goal to leverage the property to engage, grow, and promote healthy communities through civic engagement and philanthropy, and acknowledges, honors, and extends gratitude to the Kumeyaay peoples whose land they occupy.
Last updated June 23, 2026.
• Ages: 2–12 years old
• Schedule: Options include 1–2 hour classes and events, 1.5 hour Chefcitos and private kids’ cooking classes, 4- or 5-day summer camps running 9:00 am–4:00 pm, and 2-hour family cooking class sessions.
• Price: Chefcitos kids’ cooking classes cost $30 per child with a 20% discount for National City residents, and private kids’ cooking classes are 1.5 hours for up to 14 children at $35 per child or a minimum of $350; a National City resident price is available for certain Family Cooking Class Summer Series sessions for those with a 91950 zip code.
Olivewood Gardens Youth & Family Classes and Camps is part of Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center, which was established in 2008 and offers science-based environmental education and nutrition lessons, hands-on gardening and cooking classes, job skills and leadership development programs for youth, adults, and families, a monthly Open Gardens and Property Tour, a weekly Produce Stand, recipes as a resource, an option to host events at the venue, the Roots For Health monthly giving program, a Family Cooking Class Summer Series with themed veggie-based meals, the Talls & Smalls outdoor adventure in the garden for ages 2–5 with an accompanying adult, the Garden Explorers program for K–6th graders, and summer camps where campers explore nature and food with hands-on activities in the teaching garden and kitchen. Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center’s purpose is to build healthy families and a healthy environment, and it states that it is proud to create an environment to help build confidence in nutrition, environmental, and leadership skills. The organization states that its property acts as a resource for community members to explore health education, environmental stewardship, and community connection, notes that Christy and John Walton donated their home and property to the International Community Foundation with the goal to leverage the property to engage, grow, and promote healthy communities through civic engagement and philanthropy, and acknowledges, honors, and extends gratitude to the Kumeyaay peoples whose land they occupy.
Last updated June 23, 2026.
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