If you’ve never heard of landscape design then you can get a crash course on it next weekend when an award-winning international expert from Australia stops by St. Albert.
Jamie Durie has hosted or appeared in numerous TV specials and shows, and has been a frequent guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The Outdoor Room, his program on the HGTV channel, is now in its fourth season. He’s coming to the Enjoy Centre on Saturday, March 31 for a three-hour presentation on what he calls the human garden.
“The concept observes what type of emotions gardens provoke in us,” he explains, “and once we understand this, how we are given an excellent opportunity to facilitate those emotions by making a more informed and comprehensive design decision, with a careful blend of hardscape and the very things that evoke emotions in us – plants.”
This theory lets people’s human sides be the design drivers for gardens – what he calls outdoor rooms, he says.
“Our own personal patch of the earth, when it’s transformed into a lush, new, living, breathing garden – with a potent and powerful injection of the very life force that we undeniably connect with – this is the true bond that is and always will exist between people and plants.
“So it’s very important to create gardens that are human friendly and interactive so that we can blossom just as much as our gardens.”
Durie spends a lot of time thinking about plants, their purposes and how they can be used most effectively while designing spaces.
“Choosing the right plant is both about esthetics and what works best for the given area and its climate to promote healthy plant living,” he says.
Durie has taken this philosophy to the next stage by creating a new app called Garden Design with Jamie Durie. The app’s plant finder allows the user to enter their zip code to retrieve a list of the best plants for the area and the closest garden centre to get them.
It also provides design tips and philosophy videos that will show you how to place these perfect plants to help your garden along.
Durie said he doesn’t do this purely for commercialism but because he wants people to derive the same pleasure from plants that he does.
“There’s a philosophy behind my work,” he says. “I believe that all aspects of your living indoors should and can be replicated outside. A garden should be a natural extension of your interior living space.”
Durie has never been here before but is excited to see for himself why St. Albert calls itself the Botanical Arts City.
“As a qualified horticulturalist, a place that shows appreciation for plant life and sustainable living is the ideal place for my presentation,” he said.
