 Burton's awareness of architecture and landscape as complementary forms of the same process was confirmed when she took time off from studying at UCLA to visit Japan.There, in the gardens and temples, she observed the power of aesthetic simplicity and experienced the fusion of nature and architecture.“I like to think of the garden and landscape in the context of a big idea.”

To demonstrate how modernist ideas were embedded in the mid-century gardens and houses of A. Quincy Jones, Joseph van der Kar, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, and many more, Burton wrote, with Marie Botnick and Kathryn Smith, the book "Private Landscapes