> You're probably just expecting stricter definitions of the word "garden" (and "wilderness" for that matter). At one extreme there's a botanical garden, where every single leaf of every plant is carefully inspected and maintained, but at the other end, but still a "garden", is a euphemism for "not as it would be with zero humans around."

Not really. The most common image of a garden is a controlled nature space tended for human enjoyment.

“As it would be with zero humans around” is the definition of a wilderness.

Even if you pushed the definitions to extremes they don’t overlap (a wildlife garden is still a garden).

Either way natives didn’t have that degree of control. Even today, in places where forests are assigned to villages for such caretaking, they don’t have that degree of control, even with all the modern aerial firefighting power it is a struggle, as evidenced by current wildfires in the Mediterranean.