After attending Moonee Ponds West Primary School he worked with the Victorian Railways as an apprentice carriage builder.
The Depression brought him and his family back to Melbourne, where he took on whatever work he could find (including repairing broken window glass), and eventually settled in Ivanhoe.
[2] Among the gardens in which he did rock work for Walling were: In Australian Home Beautiful of December 1938 Walling wrote: "It is a rare thing this gift for placing stones and strange that a man possessing it should bear the name Stones... Lovely as formal gardens can be, it is these informal schemes, in which boulders form so important a part, that appeal so tremendously... they give us the atmosphere of the country, and the refreshment of mind derived from such".
"[9]: 10 In her foreword to The Ellis Stones Garden Book published in 1976[10] shortly after his death, Thistle Harris elaborates "Ellis Stones abhorred geometrical patterns as much as does nature on a grand scale, and straight paths, trimmed borders and serried ranks of plants are never to be found in his gardens.
Curving paths leading to forever; informal clumps of plants, bending intimately towards each other; lichen-covered rocks of geological antiquity—these things distinguish his designs.
[2]: 96–7 Stones' specific advice on the design of home gardens has been distilled as follows: His employees also recall him frequently commenting, "when in doubt, plant spiraea!
[12]: 104 While not formally trained himself, Stones supported the establishment of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, becoming one of its first affiliate members, and receiving a fellowship in 1975.
After discussions with prominent Melbourne architect Robin Boyd and his young employee Graeme Gunn, Yencken (with timber merchant John Ridge) established the company with the vision of providing architect-designed houses at project home prices.
[2][37] Graeme Gunn was architect-in-charge, and Ellis Stones – then aged 71 – took on its landscape and garden design.Eventually Merchant Builders assembled a team of architects to design 50 basic house plans.
The architects consulted included: Ellis Stones was commissioned to undertake landscaping in many of the Merchant home developments.
[39][40] The retention and supplementation of native vegetation championed by Stones and the Blackburn Tree Preservation Society has become the norm for median strips and roadside planting throughout Victoria.
[2]: 119 For the Tullamarine Freeway he wrote to Lord Mayor Ron Walker late in 1974 suggesting "the whole length... as a beautiful bushland setting, with the statuesque river red gums a main feature... to welcome visitors to Australia.
[42] As Anne Latreille describes it "Peter Glass visited Ellis on site the day before he died and found him 'leaping around those rocks like an antelope'.
"[2] : 247–8 Not long after his death, the MMBW preserved a large amount of land along the Yarra Valley in a series of metropolitan parks, landscaped with native vegetation exactly as he would have wanted.
[45] The Ellis Stones rockery in Burnley Gardens was created to honour his contribution to landscape design in Australia.
[46] The Ellis Stones Memorial Award is offered biennially to a landscape student for an outstanding piece of research.