The one about having a garden? If so it sounds like you're in suburbia, not a rural area.
Get somewhere actually rural, like a town with less than 1000 people or an area with most people in agriculture. Somewhere people can't see their neighbors. You'll find most people don't care about suburban nonsense like preening lawns and HOAs.
The context was a "return to nature" movement, not specifically suburban morals. Rural areas, at least in my country, mostly consist either from intensive unsustainable agriculture, or forests that get logged out with increasing speed. There are attempts to steer to more ecological and climate-change-resistant land management but it's so slow and arduous. Nature is to them just something to be exploited.
Try getting outside of cities and go somewhere rural next time you take a vacation.