Low maintenance garden inspiration

[Aomame]

We're looking to redo our garden completely and looking for inspiration/ideas please! Pics of current garden attached. It's not very big, about 12m long and 9m wide. When it's "done" it looks nice, but we always fall behind on maintenance and it gets to be a big job to get it back under control. We enjoy spending time outdoors and are keen to have a nice outdoor space to socialise, ideally with some sort of outdoor kitchen. We definitely need to replace the fencing all the way round, 6ft, nosy neighbour on one side and yes, that is my neighbour's conservatory with a window looking directly into my garden (came back from holiday to that one!) We catch the sun where the decking currently is most of the day, then the sun moves along towards the "mini house" that's currently in the far left corner looking away from the house - thinking maybe two seating areas, or one large patio that curves round? We want to have a lawned area but would ideally only have plants in pots to avoid the dreaded weeding. Has anyone got any ideas for how to lay this out, nice low maintenance plants that grow well in pots, suggestions re: outdoor kitchen?

Herbs are nice to have in pots.

To be honest, unless you want to concrete the whole thing over, grass is probably the lowest maintenance groundcover.

I think a having a nice lawn as opposed to just having a grass area is a lot of hard work.
I would make the beds larger and give them a curved shape( curves always look better in a garden than straight lines) and put in low maintenance shrubs. I would have another curved bed on the opposite side again with shrubs. I would then have a couple of pots amongst the beds many with a big fern or even a grass in them to add height and interest.
The rockery I would make larger. More rocks and plant with alpines.
Another seating area at the back with a pathway through the lawn to it again with a curve.
What is that growing over the arch?

NDN ‘s conservatory should have obscure glass on the boundary, I’d replace the low fence with a higher one, or put up a 6ft structure for plants to grow up.
Hydrangeas grow well in pots, easily maintained and there are quite a few varieties. Rhododendrons mostly are evergreen, easily maintained, grow quite large ( in large pots ).

We're in the same boat op.
Our garden is a similar size, we were thinking of a new patio but extending it about half way along and just having a smaller lawn area, for the dreaded trampoline etc.
I love the cobblestoning rather than paving but it's v expensive.
We want curved borders and a rockery area at the back, it's quite shady as there's a large tree which we want to keep.

What's your budget? I'm trying to stick to around 5k which is very tight cos I want a new kitchen too. DH suggested 10k which I think is far too much for the garden.

Herbs are a good idea, especially if we're having an outdoor kitchen. It's ivy(!) growing over the arch. Yes, I was thinking incorporating some curves would make it appealing. I thought the neighbour's conservatory should have obscured glass; it surely can't be nice for them either I'm going to go with a six foot fence all the way round and then it'll block their view ( into our garden) anyway. Not looking forward to the conversation... I'm a bit clueless on budget really, hoping no more than £10k with the outdoor kitchen, then think that's going to be a stretch, though £10k alone sounds horrific for a garden that size without lots of expensive plants