I don’t believe that Duck was guilty of orientalism. In fact I got the distinct impression he was suggesting the opposite, i.e. the west is guilty of inaccurately recording deaths.
Obviously I don’t actually tell clients that! My point is that we humans imagine that we can control everything, even down to ‘bringing some form of nature into our gardens’. The problem is we don’t know nearly enough to control everything, for every good intention there may be an unforseen consequence. You mention the fashionable, and in my opinion rather snobbish, view that ‘sterile lawns and well-behaved bushes’ are somehow bad, but butterflies don’t care what shape your bushes are and there is nothing a green woodpecker likes better than a well-manicured sward (which is incidentally far from sterile!) It is simply your preference. Wildlife generally prefers us not to be out there at all, but whether a garden is maintained in a ‘naturalistic’ or ‘immaculately tended’ style makes little difference to nature. The clients I like best are the ones who actually love their gardens, whatever their taste may be.