[acituan]

> The message, I'm pretty sure, wasn't that it was that kind of garden

> It's not an implausible degree of control to have. They weren't fighting fires, they were setting them.

It doesn't matter what kind it was, garden metaphor implies human control over a certain boundary.

And in this context (both from OP and the linked article) the control is specifically about preventing mega-fires through controlled fires. Prairies and uncontrolled fires are irrelevant.

There is little reason to question this technique was being applied locally with some success, but there is no evidence that this could be to an extent that made California their garden, in any meaning of the word you want to imagine.

If anything, I don't think the historical population vs landmass numbers can match up, hence my original objection. Disappointingly, only counter-arguments so far has been finessing over the definition of "garden" instead of working on the manpower and efficacy questions.