> At the end of a project, a system should be fulfilling its purpose, and it should do so indefinitely, forever. That purpose may expire, but the system shouldn’t. There should be no urgency to keep messing with a working system.

Wonderfully stated! Losing sight of this is I think where projects start to run into trouble with scope-creep and the ”fix” vs “enhancement” issue. It also shifts the perspective of what is a satisfactory state for a finished project vis-a-vis maintenance plans, dependencies on aging systems, etc. Your garden metaphor is also beautiful and IME accurate.