Well Pam, I think you are right!
You have had a tremendous response from lots of people and there is little I can add.
You could begin by listing what you need your garden to do, then check out these 2 books (difficult to pick 2, so chose the ones i keep looking at right now).
I am into green gardening and permaculture, which takes a while to set up and your stuff gets nibbled by things so you need to be ok about holes! It does mean though you never dig your soil or stand on your soil once you are set up.
Anyway, if you want less grass to cut, start looking at old gardening DIY books / catalogues like B & Q to see what suits your taste and pocket. I have about 50 books that all came from junk shops, but i like:
The No WOrk Garden by Bob Flowerdew ISBN 1-84509-132-9
Planning Your Garden by Peter McHoy ISBN 1-84309-362 -6
I often buy my books on the internet because they are fine second, cheap, and usually arrive fast saving the hassle of asking in shops.
Planning your garden is one of those you can just look at the picutres for ideas and know how. The No work garden stops you making mistakes that give you more work
It seems popular to replace grass with decking, flagging, gravel, and i have seen crushed glass used. I am flagging my own in places simply becasue i have a lot of old stone / Rossendale flags in the garden, but I am leaving gaps so plants take hold in the cracks to give my garden a deliberate neglected look. Works for me! It is difficult work though, and expensive to have done. Decking is instant, gives instantly flat areas and can hold power points and water taps for potted plants and a tidy looK that is low maintenance. I am not keen, but it really does help people with steep unusable gardens. I am afraid i was approached by a couple of rats that were living under somebody's decking so i am a bit warey. It can go green and slippery in shady areas in winter too, but you can always chuck a bit of sand on it.
Ornamental grasses are still popular, need virtually no maintenance and spread well if you have big spaces. i don't like 'em since getting sliced across the eyeball by one last week - devil spawn!
I find it best to avoid fancy lawn edging like log rolls that are left proud because you have to strim the edges after cutting your lawn. Strimming is a drag.
If you want a simple shrub border with different shrubs flowering throughout the seasons make sure you weed really well, get some bulbs in, then put weed suppressant matting down (with holes cut out over your bulbs and plenty of bark chippings / similar. It reduces weeding and watering tremendously.
Many oriental poppies and all manner of iris and lilies are bomb proof and the clumps just get bigger and bigger. In my garden they have to survive semi-shade and they still bloom (later than everybody elses) as do lupins. My soil is acidic / clay with great patches of old ashes (?!).
Herbacious borders like Nicky's beauties are not as difficult as people think because dense planting with things that spread with a thick layer of bark = very few weeds. You can't use weed suppressant matting if you want things to spread, but if you keep your bark topped up it still does a good job. I have an orange, yellow and blue walled border that i planted last year, then mulched well, and I have removed 3 weeds this year from that area. It contains hypericum (st john's wort), crocosmia (monbretia) mixed with lucifer, deep blue iris, primula vivaldii, foxes and cubs, and a common small leaved yellow flowering shrub the name of which escapes me - comes in a variety of colours. Nothing grows between foxes and cubs (sorry - don'tknow proper name)
The weeds pull out very easily if the mulch is kept loose with an ocassional hoe. But i confess i have not even done that yet this year.
Bark will, I think, eventually acidify your soil, but since yours already is all you need to do is check the plant labels for suitability. Alas, my soil is acidic and has quite a lot of clay, but I love pinks. I still have them though, by filling pots with a suitable free draining mixture then sinking the pots into the soil. My pots are in year 2, have not been given any attention, and are flowering happily.
Most sedums are pretty bomb proof - no draught problems - big or small - and some of their leaves give brilliant autumn colour. The big one Nicky showed is great for butterflies.
Conifer and heather rockery / sleeper beds with bulbs have to be the most low maintenace thing for years. They always make me sad though cos i aleays want to swap things around and play. Once these beds are done they are done really.
I have a pink, white and blue walled border containing (in semi-shade) climbing roses, peonies, lupins, hosta, clematis, self-seeded phlox, white saxifrage, ladies mantle, etc. all bark mulched and have weeded only twice this year. i am telling you because a lot of these are sold as needing full sun. There are seedums, different coloured aubretia and even red and pink valerians growing happily through the front of the walls becasue they do not contain any mortar.
The whole thing looks like a big messy mass of colour, so it can't be tidy, so i don't need to tidy it.
Now all you have to do is decide, then get somebody else to do it all for you or you'll be very broken very quickly, but afterwards you will have an easy time of it!
Oooh - i'm exhausted just thinking about it!
All the best.
PS Do not buy bark mulch from garden centres if you need a lot (I use 3-4 inches and it doesn't go very far).
Look in your yellow pages for a tree surgeon and ask him if he can supply you with some well rotted stuff if you need bulk quantities. Fresh stuff is not very good because it uses the nitrogen in your soil to break down and your plants can get a bit starved. Fresh stuff is fine a cheap way of making paths to keep your boots clean in vegetable or fruit areas though.
