While scholarly ambitions of participation are regularly confronted with people’s unwillingness to participate, such observations are often not dealt with within the participatory discourse theory. Based on a qualitative approach, this paper examines the question of people’s non-participation in modern Danish landscape planning. The focus involves a critical investigation of the dominating idea that participation is always ‘a good thing’ and that people will always find it advantageous to participate. Tracing the stages of the author’s own research within participatory processes in Danish landscape planning, two key categories are identified as the deeper causes of people’s non-participation: the fear of the intimate, and the fear of the strange. A general conclusion is that non-participation can be explained in terms of ambivalence. The desire for landscape development does exist, but the related visions for development are narrowed down to each participant’s self-realisations as solutions are not seen in the political sphere.