Jamie Durie

They moved to Australia in the 1950s.

Durie recalls that he and his grandmother baked and gardened together.

She taught him how to make his first curry.

He has inherited a love of the Sri Lankan culture and lifestyle.

His parents separated when Durie was age 10, and he relocated with his mother and brother Chris, to the Gold Coast, in Queensland.

His paternal grandmother, called Nanna, was a volunteer surf-lifesaver on the NSW Central Coast.

Having left high-school in Brisbane at age 15, he tried his hand at cabinetmaking, and modeled beachwear part-time.

Durie got his showbiz start in his teens as an exotic dancer in the Australian all-male revue troupe called Manpower Australia.

Durie's agent introduced him to Manpower Australia, a touring dance troupe best known for its male dance performances and for its dancers' distinctive physical attractiveness and sex appeal.

For seven years, Durie toured internationally with Manpower Australia, acting as manager, and also as principal dancer, performing acrobatics and trapeze acts to large audience venues in Las Vegas, NV.

"I was the lead performer and designed the sets and costumes" he says.

Durie notes that while Manpower Australia was perceived as putting the risqué into risky, the shows were highly professional acts that even his grandmother was comfortable with.

The timing was ideal, as "The 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in Australia were very chauvinistic and the female body was overexploited", as he explains, "There needed to be social change."

Retiring from Manpower Australia at age 26, Durie made up for his early exit from schooling by completing a four-year horticultural and landscape design course.

Jamie Paul Durie OAM (born 3 June 1970) is an Australian horticulturalist and landscape designer, furniture designer, television host, television producer, and author of eleven books on landscape architecture, garden design and lifestyle.

Durie founded the landscape design company Patio Landscape Architecture and Design in 1998.

Don Burke, whose production company recruited Durie in 1999 to front Backyard Blitz , describes him as a "born showman".

Durie was the host on the TV renovation show The Block, on the Nine Network.

Durie was the main host and the lead landscaper on the garden makeover program Backyard Blitz, on the Nine Network - created and produced by horticulturist Don Burke - from 2000 to 2005.

In 2002, Durie registered the Australian business company, JPD Media & Design.

Within a few short years, he made hosting appearances on Australian reality show DIY television programs.

The original The Block TV series first ran for two consecutive seasons in 2003 and 2004, hosted by Durie.

Durie hosted the US PBS series The Victory Garden from 2007 to 2010.

The show is PBS network's longest-running gardening TV series.

In 2007, Durie participated in the 6th Australian series of Dancing with the Stars, in which he was eliminated in 7th place, on 17 April 2007.

In 2007, Durie hosted Australia's Best Backyards on the Seven Network.

The show was a lifestyle garden program, similar to Backyard Blitz on the Nine Network.

In 2007, Durie has filmed lifestyle segments with Oprah Winfrey, on the Oprah Winfrey Network (U.S. TV channel), whom he credits as giving him his US TV breakthrough.

He is the founder and director of a design company PATIO Landscape Architecture and Durie Design and also is a 2008 Gold Medal winner at Britain's prestigious Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Chelsea Flower Show in Chelsea, London for Australian Garden and designed by Durie.

Durie was the television host of the 2008 Australian lifestyle program The Outdoor Room, broadcast on the Seven Network.

He hosted the dynamic design makeover show HGTV Showdown in 2009.

Following the end of The Outdoor Room on the Seven Network in 2010, Durie relocated the concept of the series to broadcast on the American HGTV network as The Outdoor Room with Jamie Durie.

Unable to bring his own Australian design team along, Durie put together a new team of top-notch designers, horticulturists and contractors.

In his HGTV series, Durie rescues forlorn yards in Southern California with design schemes inspired by gardens and landscapes from around the world.

Filmed mostly in and around Los Angeles, The Outdoor Room with Jamie Durie uses sustainable ideas - such as low-water plantings and reclaimed hardscape - to design intimate, livable environments for erstwhile non-gardeners.

Since 2015, Durie has co-presented as a visiting expert in gardening & landscaping, on the Australian lifestyle program, The Living Room, which airs on Network Ten.

Durie is currently contracted to RUSH Entertainment Group, that organises events.

Durie was born in Manly, northern Sydney, New South Wales, and spent his formative years living in the mining town Tom Price in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, with his mother and maternal grandmother both Sri Lankan.

His grandmother, Daphne de Zylva, was born in Sri Lanka and met his English grandfather in the air force during World War II.

As of 2018, Durie has hosted more than 50 design shows around the world.