Many of his contemporaries were not focused on local conditions and native plants, instead favoring exotic species and foreign garden types.
Bye’s work is also said to have been strongly influenced by the 18th century English garden aesthetics of Humphry Repton.
Over the span of 40 years, he took more than 40,000 photographs of the landscape and would assign a word to describe the mood or quality that he felt it represented and/or evoked.
He manipulated the soil around the fence until he was satisfied with the tension between the shadows of the trees and the horizontal line of the undulating land.
At the Connecticut residence, Bye created small gardens around the house which resemble natural landforms.
Throughout all of his works, Bye was interested in using natural phenomena as ephemeral materials, such as fog, mist, snow, rain, light and shadows.
While in the Soros residence he highlighted snow, here light and shadow were considered as strong features of the garden.