I’m starting to worry about the Jamie Durie’s of the world. I, as a gardener, am getting concerned that the kind of landscaping he represents—outdoor spaces that are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from tightly decorated indoor spaces—seems to be taking over.

Take a look at what people are doing on home makeover shows, including Durie’s own The Outdoor Room on HGTV. Look at the increasing bulk of outdoor furniture in catalogs. Or just go shopping for a patio set, which is what we did recently.

The mismatched plastic sets we’ve from as long as fifteen years ago that been living with were looking long in the tooth. We wanted a simple table and chairs for the roof deck, and maybe something for the back patio. Yes, we found tables and chairs in the stores…

…But there’s been a huge explosion in huge-scaled resort-themed seating, much of it wrapped in synthetic wicker. They tell you to “think big” when selecting furniture scaled to the larger outdoors, but so much of this would be all out of proportion to the average garden. In all this McMansion-scaled furniture I kept seeing Jamie Durie, and I wondered:

A. Who has space for all this huge furniture? and,

B. What happens to the space devoted to gardens when the inside starts to sprawl outdoors?

A 2010 interview in the LA Times didn’t raise my comfort level. When asked about the basic focus of his recently launched TV series Durie replied, “The reason I created this show was to cast a wider net and reach the non-gardener. I want to encourage people interested in travel, architecture, design, food or even fashion — and the show really encompasses all that. It’s really just laced with gardens, which is the icing on the cake.” How do you reconcile this statement with the tag line for his website, jamiedurie.com: “Connecting people with plants”?

These outdoor rooms are spaces where potted plants are largely interchangeable with throw pillows. Planted surfaces and garden beds give way to hardscape. The dominion of humans, sheltered indoor spaces, make their move to transform the outdoors into places where nature gets increasingly marginalized. Humans domination marches ahead.

Contrast these with garden rooms of the past, which seeme more about the plants, often featuring walls made out of plants and living green things underfoot. Our generation’s outdoor rooms seem to be all about the humans. For a purportedly green-conscious era all this seems backwards.

Is anyone else bothered by this? Or is it just me?