The motivating force behind Jeff Barone's work is his passion for creating tranquil, rejuvenating landscapes in which one's emotional, mental and physical states are soothed and healed by the natural world.

Barone's interest in the physical world, and man's interaction with it, began with formal studies in Material Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. After college, he went on to lead adventure-based wilderness experiences at the Outward Bound School in North Carolina, to travel in the US and Asia, and to receive certification in Biodynamic Gardening, a practice developed a hundred years ago by the German cosmologist and pedagogue Rudolph Steiner. Steiner, like Einstein, realized that various energetic systems of the Earth, the orbiting planets, and the human body, pulsate in what appears to be a choreographed systemic design. Understanding how cosmological systems affect plant life led Barone closer toward a vision of sacred space design.

He then apprenticed for three years with Sig Lonegren in the art of sacred earthscape, and mastered the tenets of geomancy (a process of reading a landscape's configuration), and of harmonizing with the Earth's energy through dowsing. Part of Barone's concepts as an EssentialSpace design artist stem from lessons learned from Lonegren about the form and function, both above and below ground, of ancient standing stone circles, dolmens, stone beehive construction, labyrinths, pyramids and the Earth lines of the Naztec regions of South America. Pursuing another of his many interests, Barone received certification in Polarity Therapy through which he garnered an understanding of the interactive minutia of the human energetic field.

The culmination of Barone's voracious curiosity and passion for the natural world, and man's relationship to it, were his studies at Harvard University's Landscape Institute where a knowledge base of amazing richness and depth influenced his creative expression as a landscape designer. Barone's understanding and perspective on both the natural world and human nature inform his design sensibility in his use of earth, stone, water and air. Barone's ability to create restful, natural space to enhance our emotional connection to the environment is evident in his design and construction of meditation gardens, pathways, sacred tree circles, grottos, standing stone circles, prayer seats, labyrinths and stone walls.