I've read this several times over the past few days and am still having a tough time wrapping my brain around it. The fact that it runs as intended when in a Joomla wrapper is mind boggling.

The only thing that comes to mind is the fact that directives in a .htaccess file impacts all files and directories beneath it.. so, a .htaccess file in the root directory affects all files in your landscaping_links , in addition to a .htaccess file within that same directory.