Green Stuff Camp

Archived Q&A and Reviews

July 2014

I'm interested in hearing from parents whose children are attending or have attended the Green Stuff camp at U.C. Berkeley Botanical Garden. Did your child enjoy it? Was it engaging? What kind of things did your child do in the camp? Would you go again? Thanks! Katharine

I can't speak to the current Green Stuff Camp--although from the website it doesn't look like it has changed much. I just wanted to chime in to say that my now 28 year old daughter attended Green Stuff Camp about 20 years ago or so and she still has fond memories of it! She learned all the nooks and crannies of the garden and made a special life-long connection to the Garden. She says: ''I can't remember everything we did. Very few specifics, I just know that I really enjoyed it and the whole vibe was very ''magical'' in a sense. We felt like we owned the place and we learned a lot. Good for adventurous nerds, I guess?'' Sally

My son has participated in Green Stuff for the last two years and will do so again this summer. It's a wonderful camp and a peaceful, inspiring place to spend a week. It is a fairly structured camp, with counselor-led activities most of the time. The counselors are UC students, usually with education and/or science courses of study. There are two counselors for the small group (~12?) of campers. The kids really feel like the garden is ''theirs'' by the time the week is over. They get docent-led tours (topics such as indigenous ethnobotany) and may do activities like painting a small pot and planting something to take home, selecting mint from the herb garden and making tea, dipping for insects in the pond, nature journaling... They are mostly outside but they also do activities in the conference center building. I highly recommend it. My son can be hard to handle and the camp leaders have treated him with compassion and provided personal attention when necessary. The UC Botanical Garden is very much worth getting to know and supporting. We're really lucky to have such a resource here. Annie

March 2009

Does anyone have any experience with the Green Stuff Day Camp at the UC Botanical Garden? We're considering sending our 6.5 year old daughter to it this summer. Laura

My daughter went for two summers. They basically spend the day doing different plant-related activities on the beautiful site of the botanic gardens. She learned and because of the layout, just being there gave her a week of healthy exercise. The teachers were mostly Cal students, and seemed to enjoy themselves as well. The age range is pretty narrow, or we would have done that camp for another summer.