So in our case it was like this, that the garden was pretty overgrown and there was also quite a bit of trash and dilapidated things. For example, something like a loose 10m long wooden shelter by the wall, a huge compost pile with asbestos sheets, partly trash buried somewhere or trash heaps overgrown with ivy and who knows what. Most of it wasn’t even visible beforehand. So we first took away all the trash, removed a lot of ivy. Pruned fruit trees, removed sick and no longer salvageable plants and trees, and removed dilapidated "structures". Then you could first see where you stood. Afterwards I removed a good part of the bed area... a huge amount of work to dig everything up, uproot it and dig out the edges. Then refilled everything and sowed grass. And after that I started with new plantings. Gradually, as the money fitted. I only knew one thing: All plants must be perennial, hardy to winter and preferably either native and/or valuable for insects and preferably not too poisonous since we have children and animals. But I didn’t think about it forever - I thought about how tall the plants should be (privacy screen or not, front or back of the bed, etc.) and then just bought whatever was available. It also has to be said that for example the carport, the garage, the solid shed and the pavilion were already standing, and the paving was already done and the small greenhouse was also already there. That took a lot of decisions off us.