I do think this plants focus is unnecessarily limiting, and it does seem from your comments on Petra  that you are well aware of what can be achieved with other materials. Martha Schwartz is not definitive, merely one practitioner.
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A focus on ‘naturalness’ is limiting too, of course - and even more the idea that gardens as ‘natural’ should be self referential. Why would anyone limit what a garden can express to something to do with ‘nature’? I don’t see sculptors making sculptures of chisels.
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And, of course it helps if the sculptor knows how to use their chisel and their chosen medium, and the garden designer their plants and other materials. But best for them not to be predominantly obsessed with the materials and medium or they will (do?) disappear up their own fundament - in this case for lack of any other interest.
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Which is perhaps why Noel and Michael Pollan go off in those kinds of directions. The mainstream garden world offers little alternative to full time garden writers with active minds and interests. Some of the rest of us are fighting for greater range and expression in gardens.

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