Although response to context is inherent in a good design solution in the sense that you point out – genius of place – context itself is exceedingly important.

Relating this back to context sensitive design if the definition of a weed is ‘the wrong plant in the wrong place’ perhaps Tom could suggest a definition for ‘the wrong garden in the wrong place’?

The perhaps it might be possible to discuss what makes a garden right or wrong for its context, rather than a good or bad example of that type of garden.

regum aequabat opes animis, searque reuertens
nicte domum dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis
It translates as:
He used to equal king’s riches with his spirit, and when he returned home late at night, he used to load his table with feasts unbought.

Virgil describes the capacity of a ‘happy husbandsman’ or gardener to produce rich food by hard work. It is a great motto for home gardeners who produce food ‘by the sweat of thy brow’. The buyers of London and Wise’s book may be assumed to have known the Georgics from their schooldays, so that the whole quotation would not have been necessary. Most of the book is about growing food, not about garden design. They had their priorities right. But the classical allusions are also significant and, in the course of the eighteenth century, led designers to re-create scenery from the landscape of antiquity in their country estates. They also started buying food from markets – which eventually led to the demise of vegetable growing on country estates. When their distant relatives talk about ‘restoring a walled garden’ on a 21st century estate what they have in mind is turning the old walled vegetable garden into something ornamental which will bring in more visitors and more money. So they still uses gardens to produce ‘riches’. The Walled Garden at Scampston is a good example.