I think of a flat, rectangular plot with equidistant rows of carrots, beets, bush beans, and peas. Each gardener in the act of gardening expresses what that activity means to them, and so gardens are as different from one another as people are. A garden can be where you grow flowers, butterflies, fish or gourmet mushrooms in a rotten stump. As many gardeners as there are, as many kinds of gardens there will be. But no matter how you look at it, gardening is hard work.
Contrary gardening is wholistic.
Rather than hardship, it brings peace and inner rewards beyond measure. Those pagani of ancient Roman times were not interested in giving up their good life for anyone's idea of institutional religion, politics, or economics. What the pagans understood, as do contrary gardeners, is that the aim is joy. The more one immerses onself in the complexity of the familiar, the more one can attain the simplicity of life.