A Fellow and Past President of the American Society of Landscape Architects, she has completed a wide range of national and international projects in the US, Europe, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and Bolivia.

[1] Barton cites witnessing the devastation of Lake Erie as a young child as influential in her decision to pursue landscape architecture.

Barton also discusses the influence of the gardens of 17th century French landscape architect André Le Nôtre, of which she says: 'To see something deliberate and controlled juxtaposed with the unmanicured enhances the perception—and, I think, the appreciation or "seeing" of each.

That is an experience I use constantly in my work: strong juxtapositions of the "natural" with "cultural interventions," which make people see, appreciate and, hopefully, care for their environments.

'[2] Barton develops her philosophy of the integration of design and ecology and "landscape urbanism" further in a Boston Globe op-ed published in 2003 while she was a juror for the Rose Kennedy Greenway design competition: "Parks can be instrumental in solving larger urban and ecological or infrastructure problems, such as storm drainage, air quality, water supply, and the demolition (or construction) of expressways.

Some of the firm's more well-known projects include landscapes at the Stanford Law School, The Gap Headquarters in San Francisco, the Rosie the Riveter Memorial, and Cavallo Point, a renovation of Fort Baker in Marin County, CA.

[7] Barton has often collaborated with artists including Elyn Zimmerman,[8] Susan Schwartzenberg,[9] Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen,[10] Bruce Beasley, and Mark Mennin.