It’s quiet in the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens. On a particularly blustery day, one might hear the wind whip through tall palm leaves or the ocean just across the street, but its West Palm Beach, Florida, neighborhood is quiet enough that some tourists report initially wondering if they’re in the right place. The signage is demure, and from the sidewalk all one can see is a stately home and, behind a low wall, a dense collection of lush, verdant palms.

Deep in that jungle, the Seven Beings wait for visitors. They’re attentive and watchful, but utterly silent. Each figure faces a different direction, scanning the trees. They’re endlessly patient. And when someone turns a corner or peeks out from behind the leaves, the giant beings, lovingly carved from pink Norwegian granite, stare back.

That kind of encounter—one moment a visitor is browsing among the trees, the next they’re face-to-face with a monumental sculpture—is by design. Ann Norton, the artist who lived and worked here, planned for the gardens to function as a spiritual retreat where living plants and creatures would live in harmony with her art. Seven Beings is one of the nine sculptures meant to be discovered, almost as surprises, inside the lush jungle of rare plants and cycads. “It’s almost like those sculptures are coming out of the ground to make a powerful intersection between the world of art and nature,” says Frances Fisher, chairman of the Sculpture Gardens’ board.

The nonprofit Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens (ANSG), which includes Norton's house, studio, and two acres of tropical plants, is dedicated to preserving Norton's all-encompassing vision for her work. Because of its commitment to preserving and sharing Norton's world with the public, the ANSG was recently added to the National Trust's Historic Artists' Homes and Studios program.

A lifelong conservationist, Norton wasn’t only building a home for her art; she meant to create a sanctuary for living beings. That’s why the ANSG puts as much emphasis on the plants as they do on Norton's sculptures. “We have two collections here: We have Ann’s art collection and then we have our palm and cycad collection,” says Margaret Horgan, director of community engagement. The gardens contain over 250 species of rare tropical plants, and their growth is essential to carrying out Norton’s vision.

Towards the end of her life, Norton collaborated with her friend Sir Peter Smithers, a landscape architect, to design the gardens where her sculptures would reside. “They created a partnership that was based on his understanding of how nature played with art,” Fisher says. Together, they drafted the garden’s founding principles, which envisioned the gardens as a low-labor ecosystem, where the plants would thrive with minimal effort, and where the sculptures would be displayed in a “tranquil, withdrawn, and meditative” atmosphere. Norton also founded the nonprofit that maintains her gardens today.

Norton died of leukemia in 1982, but her plans and legacy were intact. “A lot of the specimens that went in at the very end of her life were immature,” Horgan says. “Now we get to reap the benefits … They’re full and grown and magnificent.”

Preserving Ann’s vision is the ANSG's main goal, Fisher says. “We want to represent Ann’s commitment to conservation and to preservation of the quiet retreat in the middle of a growing urban area. It was very important to her that the mystery of art, the ability to communicate something far larger than ourselves, be reflected in the preservation of her property,” she says.

That includes preserving her studio—”we like to think that if she came back tomorrow, she’d find it as she left it,” Fisher says—and her 1925 home; to that end, the home, studio, and gardens are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.