we bought a neglected house. The gardens were basically mini weed nurseries. With ground elder 
we finally cleared the front garden of all its big ugly shrubs etc last week, rescuing anything nice which are living in pots in the back garden.
We have applied glyphosate to the garden.
I have now spent 2 hours clearing about 3sqm of weeds. At this rate, it'll take me about 3 weekends.