Gayla Trail
More from Gayla in her blog archive.
Gayla Trail’s background as a designer stems from both her studies and work in the Fine Arts as well as a love for the natural world. Gayla created and continues to run the popular gardening project, You Grow Girl and is the author of You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening (Simon & Schuster).
Gayla launched YouGrowGirl.com in February 2000 as a personal response to a kind of gardening media she found missing. Over the years the website has become a thriving community for likeminded gardeners and even self-confessed “black thumbs.” Gayla has always gardened in whatever space she had available. She now splits her gardening time between a rooftop deck, a community garden plot, and a formerly barren patch of public land on a busy urban corner.
Gayla’s garden-based writing and photography has been widely featured in magazines, newspapers, radio, and television. She is also a frequent speaker, and spokesperson on the topics of urban gardening, ecology, and community. More information about Gayla’s public and speaking work can be found here.
Gayla’s work as a photographer is informed by both her passion for gardening and the natural world and her childhood experiences growing up in Southern Ontario. At its heart, her work is expressive and evocative of emotions tied to locations and the nuances of human presence. Many of the photos she creates serve as self-portraits – reflections of her filtered by a sense of shared history.