It's Great Outdoors It's Great Outdoors

The Age

Thursday August 28, 2008

Larry Schwartz

Jamie Durie wants so much more, writes Larry Schwartz.

THE young fellow leaning out of the passenger window of a white van recognises Jamie Durie. "Love your gardens," he says.

The television garden guru has just flown in from sunny San Francisco. He looks up from under a borrowed umbrella. "Isn't this rain great?" Durie says.

He's happy enough to be acknowledged for his work. But Durie wants so much more.

"I don't need to preach to the converted," he'd said earlier of his new lifestyle show, The Outdoor Room, on Seven. "I have a large group of people who enjoy watching garden makeover shows - passionate gardeners and new homebuyers who are desperate for new ideas. They will continue to watch me. I want to cast a wider net."

Durie talks about his new 10-episode show with a zealot's gleam in his jet-lagged eye. "I'm really proud of what we've created and I think it's certainly the best television I have ever made."

He's been around the world in search of horticultural and design inspiration to transform gardens into "outdoor rooms", created with as much care as indoor spaces and reflecting the places he has been.

He spent five months visiting "some of my most precious places in the world". He mentions the town of Ubud in Bali, a safari lodge outside Johannesburg in South Africa, Umbria in Italy, the Cotswolds in England, Egypt and Thailand.

"This is the show I've been dreaming of for five to six years," says Durie, who has returned with objects, including a 120-year-old chandelier he found in Paris, to instal in a local backyard.

Top chefs including Neil Perry, Luke Mangan and Toby Puttock will create national dishes from countries featured on the show.

"I wanted to develop a show that encompassed all of my passions and widened the scope of viewers so that we weren't just talking to gardeners."

Computer-generated images enable viewers to see "way down into the core of the plant" or water molecules in stones found near the Pyramids. "We talk about the environmental pros and cons with every makeover that we do."

Durie has hosted shows such as Backyard Blitz, Renovation Rescue and The Block for Nine. He declines to comment on claims that he either demanded, or knocked back, a $2million pay rise, before joining Seven in early 2007. "I don't really like to discuss financial matters," he says. "I will say that the reason I went to Seven was not financially based. That's all I will say.

"I think part of my reasoning (in leaving Nine) was the fact that Seven at that stage had a little bit greener philosophy. They were offering the possibility of having creative control over my new pilots, which was paramount to me."

Durie hosted Australia's Best Backyards after joining Seven. He mentions "a whole bunch" of other shows he's worked on, including Torvill and Dean's Dancing on Ice, Magic Moments and Surprise Surprise.

He has flown in with his 13-year-old daughter Taylor. She's the "wonderful thing that came out of my time in Las Vegas", he says of his stint in America as founder member of the male striptease act Manpower Australia. It was, he says, the first Australian cabaret show to gain a residency on Las Vegas Boulevard.

He watches Taylor play soccer on regular visits to the US and praises her flair for writing. He visits America once a month, hosting the long-running PBS gardening program The Victory Garden, and for regular appearances as gardening expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He says he has learnt from Winfrey's approach to life that it is important not to limit your ideals. Durie's a qualified horticulturalist and landscape designer with his own international design company, Patio Landscape Architecture and Design, with projects in densely populated places including Singapore and Hong Kong. He owns a publishing company that has released several of his books on gardening and design.

Now 38, Durie was born in Manly on Sydney's northern beaches but left with his family as a toddler and spent most of his childhood in a mining town called Tom Price in north-western Australia. "I remember watering a rose garden at the age of three, I think," he says. "Roses grew very well out there, funnily enough."

He is partly of Sri Lankan descent - his mother was born in Kandy - and says he has a "very tropical bone when it comes to gardening".

"You know, I pinch myself every day," he says as he recalls an event he hosted with the Dalai Lama in Perth, training by Al Gore and a meeting with Barack Obama. "Without blowing my own trumpet, I'm having an amazing journey."

The Outdoor Room premieres Sunday at 6.30pm on Seven.

Critic's view, page 38

© 2008 The Age

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