By the mid-1990s Heronswood Nursery was doing a thriving mail-order business, and the display garden tours gained international acclaim.
In 2000, Hinkley and Jones sold the business, and display gardens, to Burpee Seeds, but continued to run the nursery.
Considerable effort was given to the responsible collection of seeds, and also to evaluating prospective plants for risk of bio-invasion if offered into cultivation.
[5] In 2012 the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe bought the long neglected and overgrown Heronswood at auction and brought Hinkley back as a consultant to oversee its restoration, eventually appointing him Director of the garden that he had founded.
[6] Mr. Hinkley also continues his work at his estate, Windcliff, on a bluff above Puget Sound on the Kitsap Peninsula.