Ella Gatfield is a writer, ecological horticulturalist, and educator who keeps returning to a single question: why do so few of us know the species at our doorstep? Her work moves between coastal ecosystems and the written page, tracing the edges where ecology, culture, and attention meet.

She has worked with Cornell Marine Program and Riverdale Neighborhood House, leading place-based initiatives in coastal restoration, food cultivation, and environmental education across New York City, the Bronx, and Long Island. She gathers marine biologists, farmers, writers, artists, and educators around a shared conviction: that the living world doesn't need to be explained to us so much as remembered.

She writes the Substack essay series Another Way Home—reflections rooted in ecosystems, place, and what we stand to gain when we pay attention. She is also a columnist at 27East.

Ella holds a BA in Environmental Journalism from the University of the West of England and completed the University of Vermont's intensive Farmer Training Program. She is currently an MA Dean's Scholar at NYU Gallatin, where her research focuses on environmental humanities, coastal ecology, and nature writing—investigating how sustained, lyrical attention to a specific place can deepen ecological understanding.

When she’s not at her desk, she’s at the marsh or tending her garden allotment on the East End of Long Island.