The Coastal Gardener:

Good thing I didn’t say “national gardening television shows,” because I think I’ve found a show that local gardeners might find worth tuning into.

“The Outdoor Room with Jamie Durie” (8 p.m. Saturdays on HGTV, and repeated at other times) has kept my attention for three episodes now. It’s far from perfect, but it is worth the 30 minutes.

What makes the show worth watching? It is a combination of four things that I haven’t seen in similar shows before.

First, the gardens are all here in Southern California; second, for better or worse, Durie has a lot of personality; third, the show has a generous production budget; and finally, the design work is really quite good.

Some of you may already have seen Durie on television before, most likely on episodes of “The Victory Garden,” the long-running garden show that unfortunately has lost its way in the past decade. Durie is an environmentalist and a good visionary landscape architect. Durie, now with both a home and a design business in Los Angeles and his native Australia, is the real deal.

As he clearly demonstrates on camera, Durie, like most of the best designers, is very much about vision. In his own head, he clearly pictures the end result of a project that he is working on. Like other great designers and great creators, he can see the finished result, before the first grain of soil is touched.