Jamie Durie’s out-there plan to make your plants grow

Jamie Durie is trying to get some trees removed near his $3m home reno — and now he’s come up with an idea that experts dispute.

He’s under fire for plans to bring down trees on his own waterfront property, but TV host Jamie Durie wants to help your plants grow … by playing them his personal selection of feel-good acoustic hits.

The celebrity landscaper has teamed up with Spotify to produce a plant-friendly playlist of uplifting tunes including Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles and Count On Me by Bruno Mars.

Plants are sentient and music from gentle, stringed instruments can influence their growth, Durie said.

“Your plants respond to the sound vibrations from running water through your house pipes and soil and will move their roots towards the sounds. Consider playing all the same tunes that give you the feels and your plants could reap the benefits,” he said.

Jamie Durie has teamed up with Spotify to develop a plant-friendly playlist.

Claims that plants can be encouraged to grow quicker, stronger or more abundantly if they’re exposed to certain types of music or sound are not new. Prince Charles has long advocated talking to plants.

But according to Dr Brett Summerell, Chief Botanist at the Australian Institute of Botanical Science, most studies into the link between music and plant growth have not been particularly robust.

“A large proportion of it is hokey, with a little skerrick of science,” he said.

But one University of Western Australia study did show plants responded to different frequencies of noise, he added.

“The frequency … can have both a negative and positive effect on their rate of growth and the way in which particular cellular functions will happen. But extrapolating from that to saying ‘This particular music is going to be beneficial or negative’ is a big step,” Dr Summerell said.

Dr Brett Summerell says much of the research into the links between plants and music has been ‘hokey’. Picture: The Plant Bank

While many believe plants respond best to classical music, when this was put to the test on an episode of Mythbusters, the results did not go as expected. Plants in a greenhouse with piped-in orchestral classics did grow well, but not as well as a second greenhouse full of plants that were forced to listen to a constant soundtrack of death metal.

Durie said from his own observations plants did not appear to respond well to music with heavy bass, but he was not too concerned if people thought the link between music and plants was a bit fringe.

“After two years of lockdown, plants and music are definitely the recipe for good mental health,” he said. “Any excuse you grab a hold of to play more music in your life is a positive thing.”

Spotify records suggest he’s far from the only one who sees the link. User-generated playlists with gardening-themed titles have increased by almost 100 per cent in the past month.

Regarding the furore over the plans for his Avalon house, Durie stressed the environmental credentials of the project, saying it would be completely off-grid, with solar panels, rooftop gardens, recycled timbers and charging stations for electric vehicles.

Revised plans for the site will now see just nine trees removed, instead of 17 – and five of them are being removed on arborist’s advice, he said.

“The last thing I want to do is take down trees that aren’t absolutely necessary,” Durie said.

Originally published as Jamie Durie’s out-there plan to make your plants grow