Illawarra-based garden designer Grahame Rowe is living the dream with a job so rare it's like a "unicorn", but he wouldn't have it any other way as he gets to hang out with stars Adam Doville and Charlie Albone, as well as "garden Lord" Graham Ross.

"Everyone I know grew up with Better Homes," Rowe told the Mercury.

"Even if you didn't watch this show you could walk past the presenters and know who they are."

As a kid, Rowe was always playing outdoors, with that urge to be with nature never really leaving him.

After finishing high school, he was still unsure which way to go but down the garden path was where he went, leading him to an apprenticeship with the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney: "the oldest Australian garden in living history".

"All I wanted to do was be out in nature, I had always loved having the earth under my hands," he said.

Rowe's career fuelled his passion for plants and inspired him to specialise in Victorian and Georgian-style horticulture, including a stint at NSW Government House and State Parliament House.

A self-confessed "plant nerd", Rowe prefers to call himself a "plantscaper" rather than a garden designer as he is obsessed with all things that grow in the ground.

"I love plants. I'm good at it, I'm good at remembering and identifying and knowing what they need, where they need to grow, but also what they add to a garden, what they work well with," he said.

"It's a living tapestry."

Several years later Rowe landed himself a scholarship to further his studies in England, but a "little job at Better Homes and Gardens" appeared, the temptation of pure garden design prompting him to drop the studies.

"So I [went in] with everything to lose, I had a mortgage and two young kids, my wife was not working because our littlest one was so young and ... I just didn't give myself an option to fail," he said.

Rowe has completed hundreds of television makeovers with the BHG team during the past eight years, from small projects to hide wheelie bins to finding plants that would work in a desolate side passage.

The workload can sometimes feel "almost impossible" (he needs to design up to 50 projects each year) but it is incredibly rewarding as he's helping people.

"You come up with something that they would never have thought about and it's the smallest thing and they come out and they just have tears in their eyes," he said.

"I love the pressure, and love the fact that the creativity is off the scale."

One of Rowe's all-time favourite makeovers was in Helensburgh for the family home of Kai Sakakibara.

The aim was to make their incredibly steep backyard more accessible following a tragic accident, where the emerging BMX star suffered a serious crash in the lead-up to the Olympics.

As for his own garden, it was a blank slate when Rowe and his wife bought the family home in Farmborough Heights but now others in the neighbourhood have been quick to copy his style and his "cool fence".

He calls it a "mid-century modern meets Palm Springs look" and believes his garden is his business card so he wants it to shout out what he can do.

"It has to look really special, if people see me in the [BHG] shirt and watch me pull up they'll go, 'Oh yeah, that makes sense'," Rowe said.

"Like, how many full-time gardeners on lifestyle TV shows are there in Australia? Not many. It's like a unicorn job and I'm just lucky to have it and love it."