Green Minds

7 Comments

I need your help finding subjects for a project I’m starting this spring/summer. I’m looking to photograph gardeners in their gardens.

What is a garden? My concept of a garden is very open-ended. It can be anything from a sprawling lush paradise to a single plant growing in a coffee can. Gardens include but are not limited to: community gardens, allotments, backyards, balconies, rooftops, front yards, containers on a patio or street corner, store windows, fire escapes, windowsills, guerilla gardens….

Define gardener? A person who grows and/or cultivates a plant or plants. I want to document as many types of gardens and gardeners as possible… gardener’s of all ages, nationalities, genders, and experience levels…

Please email me: Your contact info, a few words about the garden and the gardener, city, and when you think the garden is at its prime or you like it best.

Note that I don’t drive so I may not be able to make it to your location at this time. However I will be in the following cities in 2006: Chicago (next week!), Toronto (always), San Francisco (July), New York (Sept), Miami (Dec).

Gayla Trail
Gayla is a writer, photographer, and former graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the author, photographer, and designer of best-selling books on gardening, cooking, and preserving.

Subscribe to get weekly updates from Gayla

7 thoughts on “Green Minds”

  1. This sounds like great fun……..I have a very small herb/flower garden in Montevallo Alabama. I am quite sure that you can grow “any” plant you want down here! It is an amazing place to have a garden. I have been learning some tricks of the trade from my 84 year old father, who still to this day keeps a rather large garden year around…with a summer, spring, fall and winter crop. My mom helps in the garden as well and also does canning of their crops.

  2. Gayla, if you want to come to Detroit/Ypsilanti/A2 you can just take the train to Windsor, and I can come get you– it’s 45 minutes from my house… Lots of community gardeners around here. Some great gardeners in Detroit who also have livestock they raise on abandoned lots…

  3. Hello Gayla, We live in a ninety-two year old semi in Bowmanville ON. We have a pretty good sized yard, fenced in with a deck and a garage. In my garden I am starting out with some existing perenials. I have planted rosebushes, herbs, and vegetables. I wish to plant more flowering perenials. I have wonderful ideas for my garden this year including coloured semi-tranparent stain to my deck and fence, building a lean to beside my garage with a bench and plants growing all around it, situated infront of my sons sandbox. Blue Morning Glory’s climbing up my fence complimenting existing ivy on my garage. I am a proffesional photographer, and went to shcool at Sheridan College Ontario. I believe that my one year old son and I working in the garden together would make adorable photograph. He loves to sit beside me and dig with his shovel, he never upsets any of my plants because I told him that they were alive just like him! I think it will look fabulous and am inviting you to Bowmanville ON, forty-five minutes East from Toronto on the go. I could pick you up at the Oshawa Go Station. We could hang out and photograph when the lighting is best for the garden. Just an option being so close to Toronto. Charity Citron and family

  4. I garden obsessively all summer- in two community garden plots and at work. I lead a Children’s Garden program for a very ethnically diverse group of kids here in Madison, Wisconsin. Over the course of their six-to-nine week programs, we work with 250 kids each week in the garden- it’s not the tidiest garden in the world – in fact, i strive for controlled chaos most of the time. But we sure have a lot of fun! August is probably the most righteous time to be out there- organic veggies galore and excited kids everywhere.

  5. Too bad you aren’t coming to Vancouver. Our two community gardens, Strathcona and Cottonwood (7 acres or amazing urban oasis in downtown Vancouver) are really incredible places. 1/3 allotment plots, 1/3 common areas, 1/3 wild spaces. Between the two gardens we have about 200 allotment plots. Bald eagles nest nearby, there are no fences, so it’s visited by people all the time.

    Best time to visit is on the day of our Open House and Plant Sale. This year that’s Sunday July 9th.

    I’m giving Emira a tour next week, and she’s going to write something up for yougrowgirl I think.

    Have fun with your project – sounds like a great one!
    Michelle

Comments are closed.