In more than four decades of practice, his work in ecological design has garnered widespread recognition for its broad-based and singular approach, one that is centered on giving voice to the land and its communities (Enlow, 6–7).
His firm—co-founded with Ilze Grinbergs Jones in 1969—has been at the forefront of the fields of landscape aesthetics, environmental planning, design for cultural spaces, and scenic and wildlife conservation (Woodbridge, 29, 60).
This early Fortran computer program would later inform his firm's ground-breaking work in visual resource assessment, including plans for the Nooksack River and Puget Sound (Miller, 7).
In 1966, Jones won Harvard's Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and spent the next two years exploring South America and Europe, searching for examples of regionally distinctive community planning, architecture, and culture.
As Sheldon Fellow, Jones sought to revitalize the concept of environmental determinism, the idea that plants, animals, and people—as well as human culture and language—all evolve from their landscape, or physical environment.
He also sought to demonstrate that the study of diverse cultural and architectural adaptations to place could serve as a model to improve development practices in American communities (Amidon, 19).
Ilze Jones influenced the new practice through her love of the urban built environment and her interest in public green infrastructure, community building, and broad-scale environmental planning.
The plan identified intrinsic landscape features of high aesthetic value and made recommendations for their preservation, while suggesting other areas that would be suitable for recreational uses.
The old two-lane highway could no longer handle the demands of increased traffic, but expanding the road to four lanes threatened the mature trees, historic stone fences, and original farm entrances along the route.
The 55-mile stretch of road runs north from Evaro to Polson, Montana, traversing a majestic landscape of expansive valleys and mountain ranges that is home to a great diversity of wildlife, including grizzly bears, deer, elk, bighorn sheep, and painted turtles.
The landscape immersion method has been described as “an astonishing departure from conventional zoo design because it reflected a pronounced shift in philosophy” from a homocentric to a biocentric view of the world (Hancocks, 118).
In 2002, the firm was commissioned by the Trust for Public Land to develop a system to evaluate and protect important landscape features of Puget Sound and its near-shore areas.