About Gayla

Gayla Trail is a writer, photographer, and graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the creator of the popular gardening project, You Grow Girl (now in its 10th year) and the author of You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening as well as an in-demand gardening personality and spokesperson with a focus on urban gardening, growing food, sustainable living, and community. Her work as a writer and photographer has appeared in the Globe and Mail, New York Times, Newsweek, ReadyMade, Domino, Budget Living, Sierra Club Magazine, Gardening Life, LA Times, Life Magazine, and more.

Gayla’s love for gardening began with parsley seeds planted in a Styrofoam cup when she was five years old. Inspired by the potato plants her grandmother grew in a bucket on her senior center’s fire escape, Gayla has always gardened in whatever space she had available. She currently tends three very urban gardens: a rooftop edible container garden, a community garden plot, and a guerilla garden planted in a once derelict space on the side of her apartment building in Toronto, Canada.

Published February 2010
Clarkson Potter / Random House