The garden had hardly been touched in 45 years and was tremendously overgrown - the back eastern corner was a massive jungle - when I finally hacked my way through it I scared a back neighbour who declared she'd never seen anyone emerge from the jungle in the 25 years she'd lived there!
The bits that were not overgrown were covered in weedy lawn - apart from 3 or 4 large trees and the pittosporum hedge that bounded the west and front fences, there was not much worth saving. I counted my pennies and brought in 2 willing lads with a big yellow machine and the entire lot went. Then the 2 willing lad's elder pub mate came in and built me some sandstone retaining walls, by which time all my pennies had gone and I was left to make what I could of the mud. (And all this time the house was being tended to by builders and painters and roofers, and by this time I was hoping we'd find a stash of pennies in the garden - we found a WWII air raid shelter, but that was it.)Over the past year I have transformed the entire space: the front arrow tip garden has now become a bog garden and meadowland; the vast east garden up the side of the house has become a flower and herb garden (with a few potatoes and courgettes tossed in!), the extreme back which get the most sun has become the vegetable garden, and the far eastern corner, which once was the jungle, is now a rainforest-woodland, planted out with manferns and woodland plants and sheltered by silver birches and a huge and ancient walnut tree. Bordering the edges of the woodland is a berry garden with raspberries, gooseberries and strawberries. Thus I have 4 clearly differentiated areas of the garden.
Piccies!
Click on any of these small images and that will magically transport you to larger views. This is a view of the east side garden as it was before the 2 willing lads and their big yellow machine moved in - weedy lawn looking back towards the walnut tree and the jungle - I had no idea how much land was behind there at the time.
And, lo, this is the same view (or from a very slightly different angle) showing the new flower garden about 8 months after planting out - stuff grows here!
The path is leading up towards the vegie garden. 
This is the vegetable production area - 3 raised beds (Now mostly dug out for winter manuring and composting but you can see some saladings and onions and leeks growing), then some compost bins before the woodland. There is also a a prop clothesline over one of the beds. Note the protective goblins.
And finally a picture of my potato cages - I grow potatoes in cages rather than tyre stacks - they go up to about 5 feet high stacked with pea straw and compost, and once I am ready to harvest I just undo the wire and stuff tumbles everywhere.
This was a nasty patch of land, and all the compost and straw left over from the potato harvest has really improved it. These were by a pathway that led down to the meadowland/bog garden. 
In just under a year I have dug in 20 tonnes of organic compost into this soil and spread 300 bales of lucerne hay and pea straw as mulch and long term soil improvement.
