Joiner Dotson is a Northwest Arkansas native that grew up with a strong relationship to nature. He has always been attracted to the ecotones of the Northwest Arkansas area and how people experience them. As he grew up, he observed how Northwest Arkansas changed as it grew as well.
Joiner's interest in Landscape Architecture grew when he thought about creating graphic representations of complex ideas and how doing so could aid in communicating those ideas to a wide variety of audiences. This sparked his journey to earn a bachelor's degree in Landscape Architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture. There, he learned a variety of ways to graphically communicate design intent to a wide range of people and how to design spaces with the ecological context and the human experience in mind.
"When I learned about Landscape Architecture, I was immediately interested in how the human experience is changed by the design of a natural environment."
While in school, he learned about EDG from a project they built in Rogers, Arkansas: Lake Atalanta. Joiner experienced how EDG’s redesign of Lake Atalanta, a place he frequented as a kid, created a space that set an example of how designing with ecology in mind can enrich the human experience and give respect to the historical character of a place. After this experience, he knew he wanted to be a part of EDG’s mission and to ensure that future generations have the same experience as he did growing up here in the Natural State.