What do you want there? Is grass low maintenance to you? I hate mowing grass, but you just have to mow it, and it will look nice.

I understand what you are saying about low maintenace, and you don't have alot of itme to tend to it anymore. Any gardening requires extensive weeding, and watering during drought periods.

You could just let the front bed become grass, just dig out the plants there now, the grass will over grow it anyway in time. That is easy. If you want to, mabey put a container of seasonal annual plants on the wall occasionally, and water it with a cup of water every once in a while.

The berry garden sounds like work to get rid of it. You will have to dig out the raised beds. Hopefully you have a wheel barrel, and can dump the dirt somewhere, and dig out all the berries since you don't want to tend to the plants anymore. Ask neighbors and friends if they wan the plants, tell them to bring a shovel!

You know, mabey you can plant nice cold hardy succulents where the berries are now. And put some stones around them. Succulents are VERY easy to take care of, and quite attractive surrounded by stones. You won't have too much weeding in a succulent garden if you use preemergent every February and September on the stones, just a thought. Not much water either. That way you won't have to get rid of your path of stones in the berry garden.

I think the older you get, the busier you get, the easier it is to de garden. LOL.

If you have a Master Gardeners chapter in your county you may be able to get help in getting out all the old plants. My chapter has a yearly plant sale and they will come and dig up and pot plants out of peoples gardens in order to sell the plants at the sale. Then you would know that the plants were not just going to waste and also save money (or personal time) on the demo.

I find a deep layer of wood chips solves a lot of problems. Until they break down they keep the weeds pretty much at bay. There are places around Raleigh where you can get free wood chips but you have to load them and haul them yourself. In my garden I have areas where I "let things go" after I get tired of taking care of them. Those sections become my temporary dumping ground where I pile up the leaves and weeds that I pull from the rest of the property. Not something you would want to gaze out on (mine are in the back corners) but there are only 24 hours in a day and I can only do so much.