Welcome, Wit!
Below is a site you may enjoy. The web owner sometimes posts here and is a lover of the peoples' gardens - vernacular gardens as she calls them. I like to see the old ways maintained, too. Seed packets stuck on sticks at the end of rows; wide rows and paths with no thought to the extra weeding - just get out the hoe; all manner of things flapping in the breeze to scare away birds - tinfoil, plastic tape, aluminum pieplates. That's just the old-style vegetable garden.

Nice to know you are knowledgeable about old roses, too.

Ginger

Here is a link that might be useful: vernacular gardening site

Wit
You are not alone in enjoying the city gardens. That sort of gardening is what most people pre-60s did whether they wanted to or not.I grew up with allotments down the road.
As to the idea that not all historical gardens are formal - although the image of country gardens has been modified by the romantic Victorians and and historical interpretations of the Brontes etc. they were the exception rather that the rule. Basic country gardens have always existed for the vast majority of the population. Indeed the Greeks, who were the philosophers and wrote some of the earliest surviving books on horticulture, did not have gardens, let alone formal gardens. They were a social and sculpture peole who lived in towns. The few gardens that we have descriptions of are just utilitarian vineyards, and kitchen gardens. Nothing formal at all. Aparently when they encountered the formal styles of the Egyptians and Persians, they bought back plants, but made not effort to make the gardens.