Thanks for interesting comment, Steve.

I think it would be stretching a point to say that A&E were tending anything like a vegetable garden. The Garden of Eden was probably patterned after the walled gardens--more like game preserves/arboretums--established by sultans in those times in the Fertile Crescent. The humans in the fable were just animals who got too clever, ate the magic apples that opened their minds, and ended up being expelled from their cushy life inside the zoo. That's when their work started.

The Gen 1 creation story builds on the Sumerian myth that has Earth being born from the mating act between the sky and the ocean ("And the spirit of God moved over the face of the waters"). The 7-day chronology was a later addition to that early myth.

It's doubtful early listeners would have seen the stories as conflicting--they were different stories will different lessons. And none of them comes close to offering a satisfying explanation for why a god who could create a planet would need anything from the life forms it created to occupy that world.