For over thirty years, the Jones family and by extension, The Chef’s Garden, has devoted itself to working in concert with extraordinary chefs from around the world. The conversations we have with the chefs we collaborate with and the work it inspires has resulted in a narrative intrinsic to the quality of the products we grow and the regenerative agricultural practices we implement to do it.

In 1992, Mr. Bob Jones envisioned taking this collaboration to the next level, an idea that would become one of his finest legacies. He proposed founding the Culinary Vegetable Institute (CVI), a culinary center that would be surrounded by our working farm where the chef and farmer could come together outside the restaurant setting to explore, create and inspire each other. It was hoped that this unique environment would enable the chef to step away from his or her hectic restaurant routine to retreat into a rural space that would forge a deeper connection with the land from which the products they use are grown and the farmer who tends to them.

The Jones family, including Bob Jones Jr. and Farmer Lee Jones, purchased the land for this visionary project in 1998. In 2001, the family established an advisory board that was comprised of top chefs and other industry leaders for the CVI. Farmer Lee Jones, chairman of the board, utilized these advisors for all integral decisions affecting the CVI facility, its educational mission and its marketing goals. From kitchen design to the wine cellar, from the library to the bees that are kept at the CVI, the Culinary Advisory Board crafted the CVI to cater to the educational and creative needs of the innovative chefs from around the world who appreciate the culinary center for its unique ability to inspire big thinking, forge lasting connections and trigger new inspiration.