A career in horticulture was something that grew out of his childhood back in the UK where as a 14-year-old his first job was picking potatoes and tomatoes.

He would also prune the roses for his grandma, and most of what they ate at home his dad grew in the garden.

Mr Lyles can credit his brother for his life-long career in horticulture, which officially ends this week when he retires from Worn Gundidj.

It was during the time when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in power - and as many as four million people across the country were unemployed, mainly young people - that he fell into a career working with plants.

Mr Lyles had been out of work for a year. Unless you worked at the port or at one of the big British companies, you didn't get a job where he lived.

"And I didn't want to work in the factory," he said.

Thatcher, though, had started a scheme called the Central Lancashire Development Corporation.

"My brother actually wrote a letter and didn't tell me about it. The next minute I got this letter saying you're coming for an interview Monday morning," he said.

"I got the job."

Mr Lyles was taken on as an apprentice, and at trade school he found he was a natural.

But his introduction to horticulture was not what he was expecting.

"We were in waders cleaning out a big ditch with a big backhoe and cutting back the hedges," he said.

Mr Lyles followed family members and moved to Australia in 1980 where he became head gardener at the Westpac Training Centre in Lilydale, and then head gardener at Wilson's Promontory National Park.

Over the years, he has owned his own nursery, taught horticulture at TAFE and worked at Bunnings. For the last three years has worked at Worn Gundidj's nursery.

He stepped away from horticulture briefly to run a party business in Warrnambool.

With orders coming in online from all over the world, it was a success. But it became a victim of the global financial crisis in 2007 when orders dried up.

"I'm a real people person and I see the pleasure in people's faces when you talk to them about plants," he said.

"I'm a holistic horticulturalist. It doesn't matter whether it's a native tree of deciduous or a flower... I just see beauty in them and I just love colour."

In his own garden are plants for all seasons.

"I love to watch the seasons change," he said.

"That's another thing with horticulture, you're always the centre of attention at parties."

Mr Lyles said there were always people who wanted advice about their plants.

"They used to call me the guru," he said.