Then Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Director, Marvin Mounts,[3] desired to create a tropical fruit tree arboretum on the adjacent three acres.

[4] Today’s Garden was formed by a public-private partnership of Palm Beach County and the Friends of Mounts Horticultural Learning Center in 1985.

In 2004, the Friends funded a research grant to the University of Florida to produce a Master Plan to guide the Garden’s future development.

Designed by artists Mags Harries and Lajos Héder in collaboration with WGI’s landscape architecture division, Windows on the Floating World features open-gridded, 4-foot wide walkways on the surface of the wetlands to give visitors the feeling of “walking on water.” Within these walks are four “windows” planted with aquatics and changed out with rotating and seasonal botanical exhibits growing from submerged containers.

In an artistic Asian-inspired fashion, this serene garden experience was created by natural elements of stone, wood (bamboo), and living plant materials.