As Jamie Durie prepares to leave Pittwater, he remains on a mission to ensure more people can build sustainable, affordable homes. Editor in Chief Michelle Giglio finds out what’s next.
There’s no one quite like Jamie Durie. TV host, environmentalist, award-winning landscape designer, horticulturalist – and recipient of seven Logies. It’s hard to categorise this Manly-born man, who left school at 15 and went on to receive 42 international design awards and the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2012 for supporting charitable and environmental organisations, and as a landscape designer. As well as the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society and television in 2001.
When I meet Jamie at his Avalon Beach home, he hobbles in wearing a moon boot, just two weeks after an ankle reconstruction. It’s the result of falling 20 feet during his early days performing with entertainment group Manpower in Las Vegas; now at 55, after decades of intensely physical gardening and landscape work, he finally got it fixed.
But not even surgery can slow down Jamie Durie. He has just started production on the third instalment of his Growing Home Future House series for Channel 9, which seeks to make housing more sustainable, affordable and faster to build. There is no mistaking his passion for environmental causes.
“I was hugging trees long before it became cool,” he states. “I’ve seen a lot of the bad choices that we’ve made over the last 200 years in our thirst for overdevelopment and industry, and I think it’s time to turn the ship around.”
The result is his Growing Home series, with season one covering the construction of Belah House in 2024, an environmental luxury super-home in Avalon Beach – with 230 plants in the living room, geothermal heating and cooling, a 38 panel 18 kilowatt solar system and 57,000L of water storage.
As I walk around the slick interior of the living room which has a beating heart of green foliage cascading down from the ceiling – ‘the lungs of the house’ – it’s a bit like living with the Jetsons, a true home of the future.
Belah House in all its glory seen from the Pittwater
Now for sale, open for ‘expressions of interest’ with a $29 million price guide, it’s not for all – but Jamie says building a sustainable home can be affordable. “Yes, we spent a lot more than what you would on a conservative build, but somebody’s got to shake things up,” Jamie says. “And if we don’t start using these sustainable concepts more broadly across a wider audience, the price will never come down because it’ll always be seen as a niche product.
“You don’t have to go to the lengths that we’ve gone to, or spend what we’ve spent to make the point,” he adds. “If anyone who watched our project takes away one idea, it’s ‘job done’ as far as I’m concerned.”
To showcase what others were doing in ‘responsible green building,’ Jamie embarked on a second season, Future House, where his family were one of three to erect a home using the most innovative and modern construction methods in the nation. For this, Jamie used his 72-acre farm in the Byron hinterlands in Bangalow NSW, 3D-printing a home in just 40 days. It was the second-ever 3D printed house in Australia.
For the new build, Jamie went even further to establish more sustainable practices, using 70% reduced carbon concrete, replacing cement with geopolymers like fly-ash and slag (by- products from the steel and power industries). This meant that less carbon-heavy cement was required in the mix, thereby reducing the carbon footprint.
The concrete columns and walls were printed at a factory in Sydney and trucked up to Bangalow – with some damage during transport and installation. “It wasn’t perfect,” he admits. “But we made a great impact and I hope we’ve made a difference.
Some 230 plants make up the ‘lungs of the house’
“Concrete is responsible for around 8% of the world’s carbon emissions in the building industry. However, we will never stop building with concrete. What we need to do is find new ways to innovate within the concrete industry to make it cleaner.
“Concrete itself continues to absorb carbon. And that in itself is a form of carbon sequestration. So there are a lot of myths out there and greenwashing that we worked very hard to create awareness around. We’ve endeavoured to promote people doing great green things in the building industry.”
Both projects took at least five years of research, with Jamie and his team searching for all of the latest environmental pieces of technology to implement in his own homes.
Belah House had used a lot of steel, so for the Bangalow build, Jamie was concerned about the provenance of the metal. “‘Are we mining this steel? Are we chopping down native trees?’” Jamie had asked himself. “So I started investigating where we could find recycled steel and sustainably harvested timber.”
Jamie found a company in Sydney that melts down barbecues, cars, trucks and even children’s toys to make 100% recycled steel for reinforcing.
“People simply don’t know about this stuff,” Jamie says. “There was nothing on free to air television that was addressing environmental policy or ideas or concepts, and so I went straight to the ‘mass market audience,’ which is where I think people need to absorb this most.”
For Jamie, the show has been a cumulation of his life’s work, from studying horticulture in his 20s, leading garden makeovers in his first show, 9’s Backyard Blitz in 2000, moving into home renovations with The Block (he hosted series one and two), then finally finding a niche in the environmental space. He was even selected to be part of Al Gore’s exclusive Climate Change Project in 2006 as one of 200 Australians to take part in the program. Not to mention writing 12 best-selling books!
“Shows like this are helping create more awareness,” Jamie reflects. “That’s what I want to do. This is possibly the last show I’ll do. It’ll see out my career…I think!” he laughs. “I want this house (Belah) and the television series to be my legacy. I hope that I can pass the bat to someone so that in years to come we continue to shine a light on these sustainable ideas.”
Proving that he is not just about ‘smash and build,’ Jamie went one step further in Future House than most reality TV shows, inviting Federal Housing Minister Clare O’Neil to be a judge for the series, along with Green Building Council of Australia CEO Davina Rooney. (For the record, Jamie’s Byron home did not win ‘most sustainable house’).
“It takes a Jamie Durie to do things no one has ever done before to shake things up,” the minister said on the 2025 series, which aired in December. “I love your pioneering spirit.”
“I was very touched by her comment,” Jamie tells NL. “It meant a lot to me. To make sustainable housing affordable for all Australians, we’ve got to try different things.”
While remaining tight-lipped, Jamie reveals he has been speaking to the Federal Government about ‘some new initiatives that came off the back of this program. So there are some good things that have come out of this.’
For now, he is in transition, waiting for his Avalon Beach home to sell, so the family – fiancée Ameka Jane, daughter Beau, 4 and son Nash, 3 can move into their new abode on the Bangalow farm.
It’s a transition which comes with mixed emotions, Jamie admits.
“We’ve spent two years in the house now, and we’ve loved every bit of it. We enjoy beautiful sunsets every day, which I will really miss. Where else can you stare at a waterfall?” he says gesturing to the water cascading down a cliff face of Ku-ring- gai-Chase National Park, just opposite.
But Jamie reveals he has a new mission.
“I’ve got a new modus operandi if you like. I want our kids to grow up eating from our land. I want them to eat zero chemical foods. We want to grow all our own vegetables, alongside our children. We want to build a 12-month urban food garden that allows us to not have to go to the supermarket and buy vegetables or fruit.”
Jamie has already planted 300 fruit trees and says on season three of Future House he will make a ‘game-changing garden that will create true independence.’ “We’ll control the food that goes into our children’s mouths. Not the supermarkets.”
Five families have signed up for the show who are ‘doing great things in the eco innovation space that we cannot wait to share with Australia,’ Jamie enthuses. “Everything from rammed earth, to straw bale, to hemp blocks. People are really pushing the envelope now, and there’s lots of great new environmental technology.”
“We enjoy beautiful sunsets every day, which I will really miss.”
Growing Home has already taken up so much of the family’s life, with Nash born just before filming for series one started.
“The kids have grown up on a build site – they still call this the build site. They don’t call it the home!” Jamie jokes. “I came out the other day and Nash was eating breakfast here with his helmet and his high-vis vest on.
“He goes, ‘Dad, are we going to the build site?’ Which is hilarious. (The children) are well aware of what we do and how we do it.”
I ask Jamie why he pushes the boundaries – and his family – so hard.
“Why not? You’re only here once. Life’s short. Make a difference, leave something behind.”
Belah House has already won three awards, including the Australian Institute of Building Professional Excellence Award for Sustainability. It has been put forward for another seven environmental trophies this year. Every material has been responsibly sourced, from the beautiful, plush carpets which started life as discarded fishing nets, to the old kitchen cabinets ground up into board and renewed with Polytec.
Everywhere you look is green, with over 3,000 native species peppering the 14 tiered garden beds. It’s hard to believe it was a rundown beach shack when Jamie bought it back in 2016.
“I wanted to create something that was completely green, completely off-grid. The most sustainable example of any home in Australia that we could possibly do with the technology available at that time, without compromising on luxury,” Jamie enthuses.
“I want whoever owns this (home) to enjoy it and fall in love with it and use it in the same way that we have, and value the work that’s gone into it,” he adds. “We feel it’s a legacy house, it’s an iconic house. And I think people will be buying – if I may say – a piece of Australian environmental history.”
With Australia increasingly seeing more dangerous climatic events due to global warming, part of Jamie’s mantra is ‘future proofing’ our homes, something he explored in season two of Future House. And expect more on the agenda for season three. “Resilience is top of mind. We’ve got to start creating more resilient homes. We’ve got to look at the materiality of our homes and how to make them more resistant to wind, floods, fire storm. Because we are in an age of increased weather events, no one can deny that.
“So whatever one may believe about the impact we may have made on our environment, let’s just stop throwing garbage up into our atmosphere and see what happens. Every human deserves the right to enter a cleaner planet than what it was 50, or a 100 years ago.”
When they move from Belah House, the family will miss picnics on the rooftop garden in Avalon Beach, but the couple is craving the wide open spaces of Bangalow for their children to explore. Jamie admits that during his career with Manpower, being ‘confined to hotel rooms and entertainment centres for the first 10 years of my working life, pushed me away from nature. I was suffering nature deficit disorder. And I think a lot of kids are suffering that now.
‘There’s a return to nature now that I think is important and we need to take more notice of.”
There are cows on the Bangalow property, but Jamie says the couple will ‘swap methane-producing cattle for carbon absorbing trees’ – 12,000 native trees across the entire property to be exact. “We’re going to market them to councils as Australian native street trees. That’s our business model.”
I ask what is the most important lesson he has learnt during his action-packed and diverse career spanning continents across the globe, hosting 56 television design shows along the way.
“I think to find a way within the time that you have on this planet to create positive change. And hopefully leave it in a better place than how you found it.”
There’s no doubt that Jamie Durie will continue to do just that.
Watch Jamie Durie’s Future House on 9Now.
