Once upon a time this acreage where I live was a pristine farm with workers maintaining lawns and the land owner obsessively tending to her ornamental flower beds. They grew crops in rows and spent hours and hours a week eradicating the natural flora of this land. Of course, this wasn't to last forever. Those people, who are still the owners, eventually gave up, broke up, and moved back to the home cities.
The farm became wild again. Deer, horses, and cows came and went and made their own paths over what was once a trim lawn now covered with a new batch of pioneer plants. By the time my partner came along this land was nearly a forest. The only reminders of its once park-like existence in a photo album the owner showed us on her annual visits.