With China's urban development transitioning from incremental expansion to a phase characterized by stock renewal and quality improvement, the principle of "cities should be built by the people and for the people" has become a fundamental guiding principle for contemporary urban governance and spatial production. Within this context, the concept of People's Garden has emerged as a critical response from the discipline of landscape architecture to the demands of people-centered urban transformation. By shifting the focus from elite-oriented landscape production toward everyday spaces shaped, used, and maintained by ordinary citizens, People's Garden reorients landscape practice toward livelihood needs, social participation, and grassroots governance. This paper systematically traces the ideological origins and practical evolution of People's Garden, situating it within both Chinese and international traditions of public space creation and civic participation. In the Chinese context, its roots can be found in vernacular practices of spontaneous spatial construction and the longstanding cultural notion of "sharing landscapes with the people", evident in early public garden traditions and informal, community-based landscape making. In Western contexts, comparable traditions include ancient public groves, the rise of urban parks during industrialization, and later bottom-up movements such as community gardens and civic environmental activism. Together, these diverse historical trajectories reveal a shared pursuit of publicness, participation, and collective stewardship of everyday landscapes. Building on this historical review, the study further examines the transition of landscape architecture from elite and symbolic garden forms to modern public parks, and ultimately toward contemporary participatory landscapes. While modern public parks marked an important step toward openness and accessibility, they largely remained products of top-down planning processes in which citizens were passive users rather than active creators. People's Garden, formally articulated in China in 2024, represents a qualitative shift beyond these earlier models. It integrates the principles of the People-Centered City with current social conditions of urban regeneration, emphasizing residents' subjectivity, multi-actor collaboration, and the embedding of landscape practices within daily life. From a theoretical perspective, the paper constructs an analytical framework for People's Garden by drawing on landscape architecture theory, sociology, and anthropology. Concepts such as People-oriented, the Public Sphere, Social Capital, Daily Life, and Place-making provide intellectual support for understanding how People's Garden functions not merely as a spatial form, but as a social process. Empirically, the study reviews 26 representative cases from China and abroad, covering a wide range of scales and contexts, including national parks, urban parks, community gardens, and micro-regeneration projects. Based on the leading actors and participation mechanisms involved, these cases are classified into three main practice models: government-led initiatives, multi-stakeholder co-governance practices, and resident-initiated self-organized actions. To support comparative analysis, a three-dimensional evaluative framework is developed, focusing on government support, citizen participation, and collaborative networks. This framework helps reveal the gradual shift from state-dominated provision toward deeper forms of civic engagement and self-governance. Drawing on the comparative analysis of these cases, the paper synthesizes a practical pathway for People's Landscape structured around the integrated principles of co-construction, co-governance, and sharing. Co-construction emphasizes the establishment of collaborative platforms that integrate governmental guidance, professional expertise, social organizations, market resources, and residents' local knowledge. Co-governance focuses on institutionalizing participatory mechanisms throughout the entire life cycle of landscape projects, from planning and construction to long-term management, thereby ensuring sustainability and collective responsibility. Sharing highlights the equitable distribution of ecological, social, and cultural benefits, transforming landscape outcomes into tangible improvements in everyday life, community cohesion, and environmental well-being. In conclusion, People's Garden represents a fundamental reorientation of landscape architecture in contemporary China - from the creation of designed objects toward the cultivation of people-centered processes of spatial governance. By embedding landscape practices within everyday life and empowering citizens as co-creators and co-managers, People's Garden contributes to the enhancement of urban environmental quality, the strengthening of social capital, and the advancement of grassroots governance. Although the concept is still in an exploratory stage and faces challenges related to classification, scalability, and long-term institutional support, it offers significant potential for supporting high-quality urban development and improved quality of life under the framework of Chinese modernization. As such, People's Garden provides both theoretical insights and practical guidance for realizing the vision of the People-Centered City and advancing sustainable urban futures.