The Outdoor Room- Jamie Durie Style

It’s all about reconnecting with nature and making your garden personal.  The Outdoor Living Room is such a huge trend, but more than that, an eternal experience we all desire to relax and celebrate life!  Jamie Durie, a horticulturalist, landscape designer, host and entrepreneur, shares how to create your own Outdoor Room, which starts by looking at your outdoor space as a floor plan for the inside of your home, to establish mini- destination areas that draw you in.

In Jamie Durie’s source book he teaches us how to reconnect with nature using design. He has moved to the next level of outdoor space- it’s all about being smart with shapes.

When we look at the unique areas of our backyards, front yards, and balconies, we’re thinking of a range of best picked hand design plants. Instead of spending time on shaped shrubs that have to be tailored and trimmed, consider plants that compliment a space. The goal is to make a shape of them and embrace their natural habit rather than trying to change them into what they naturally are not.

I took some notes on a few of the plants Jamie recommends- it’s all about falling in love with the plant’s architecture.

Some shrubs that grow 6-10 feet tall can be shaped into a wall- lilly pilly and  cydrydium are two of them.

Irises make fantastic low border shrubs, and Syzygiums make good hedges.

Plants with natural foliage like sepium can be formed to create a ceiling. They can be used kind of like a parasol since you know you’ll get coverage.

The gnarly foliage of Yuccas and Dracos make them great accent trees- they pull people out into the landscape like garden magnets.

The feathery golden foliage of Robinias make them perfect to use in a technique landscapers call “lifting skirt” which is defined by planting small trees 6 to 8 feet apart from one another and allowing the umbrellas to kiss each other to create an areal hedge. Then you can get layers by planting what ever you want underneath.

A section of Jamie’s book talks about studying who you are and getting into your personal design genetic. Everyone has certain colors that inspire their individual makeup. Ask yourself,  “What colors do I wear most?” look at the colors of your wine glasses and  the jewelry you use- these are all expressions of you and it’s important to invest yourself in the backyard space.

Start to design own garden immediately- the first step is to draw boundaries of the area you’re designing and draw big bubbles where the sun hits. Then map out functions so you can see all of the places come alive. Take pictures and figure what it is that you love about the space.

Then build an inspiration board. Get out to local nurseries, resorts and beachside areas. Take a picture of everything that inspires you and make a scrapbook. Everyone is getting out for the holidays so when you travel make it purposeful  travel- take pictures of plants, textures, colors, bricks, materials, stones, tiles, pictures, styles, and designs. Write them down and take notes. Then, get home and recreate that holiday! Bring your holiday home and you’ll never have to leave home again.

One of Jamie Durie’s five main design principles is to design with shapes first and plants later on. He thinks about the human garden and how we live in the space, whether it is a lounge room, a kitchen or a dining room. Create dining room, lounge room, or a kitchen in the extremities of garden so everything you’ve built inside becomes more attractive. Plants can be used to convert that room into that outdoor space. With the right design, the area can feel like it is a part of what is inside yet the sun just happens to fall on it.

Jamie also likes using sunscaping- the use of green technology like solar powered heating pavers that don’t heat up- and they are made of 96% recycled material, which is good. He has also used rammed earth- where the earth is excavated and added to concrete and aggregate. He has created a lounge suite out of foam works surrounded with native plants so that the garden completely looks after itself.

 Now, in the days of twitter and facebook and all of the digital distractions, it seems like people have nature deficit disorder! There is so much distraction that the landscape should be about re-connecting children with nature. If you can connect people with the outdoors you’re doing yourself a favor- especially since it helps children to study better and reduces our stress when we’re in gardens. Having this kind of space enhances the spirit, it really is calming. Here’s a beautiful theory for loosing weight- it’s called weeding!

 Jamie has built outdoor gyms that have it all- a treadmill, chin up bar, and step area. And for more tips on creating that perfect outdoor space, we talked about the home of the landscaping and garden guru himself. Jamie has a private bathtub in his back yard made of western cedar- you can sit underneath the moon. Even his kitchen is outside there’s a cook top with counter space so everything he loves about the inside is outside too.

He has also taken working from home to another level with a new spin on the old shed- imagine Jamie’s modern shed, which has his own design studio in it. Rather than being in an uninspiring office, he’s going to plop in there next week and have a beautiful in/outdoor space. And he doesn’t have to sit in traffic all day. Think outside the home you live in- your lounge room just got a whole lot bigger.

Vertical gardening has become popular because it doesn’t take up as much lateral space. It’s best used it in areas of the garden where you can enjoy the absolute lushness of it all. All of Jamie’s fences are completely clad with vertical garden so he’s not just looking at a boring fence. And it’s not hard; you just fix the garden bed to the wall- there are dozens of ways to do it. Another neat and budget-friendly design tip is decking tiles. They are these small wood tiles that are 1ft X 1ft. You can clip those into each other and can put a whole deck on a balcony in only 20 minutes.  

Then, on the balcony, use container plants, especially the narrow tall ones that don’t take up a lot of space like horse tails, equisetum, phormium tenax, limandra longrofalium, and tanika. Since you nurture your garden and take care of it, it can be sad when you have to move somewhere else and leave it behind- you just want to take it with you. The best thing about plants in containers is that it’s like a portable garden- you can take them with you where ever you go.

A fun philosophy of Jamie’s is to get back to being a kid. Flip it outside and design it outside. The financial side of it is attractive as well in doing this since you are investing into your home by adding value to it.

We still use drinkable water for gardens– why not grey water systems and rainwater systems? We’re wasting our water rather than allowing the water to be absorbed into the landscape. Its being drained out into the streets and getting into the ocean and choking the fish. One exciting way to use water is by implementing fountains in the garden and there are fountains that recycle water.

 For more from Jamie Durie, check out The Outdoor Room on HGTV, PBS’ The Victory Garden, or simply pick up a copy of the book!