Help me choose a planting scheme!

[FolornLawn]

I have a small-ish area (3m x 5m), currently a lawn and a border. We've moved the garden round a bit and this is now going to be planted up. We need to be able to walk through it to access a shed and patio.

I'm struggling to decide whether to do gravel mulch on top, or leave bare soil. If we went with bare soil I'd do stepping stones with ground cover planted in between, so everything is green. I'm going to plant it for wildlife, and I want it to look wild and casual.

There are two other corner borders which have stuff like hydrangeas and ferns as they are in shade.

It's a sunny spot.

The photo shows the type of thing I mean, knee-high planting with some taller things.

How often will you use the path? To be honest, I'd go for a curved herringbone pattern brick path with gaps in, planted with thyme, chamomile etc, or with cobbled sections. That can still look informal, but will be a lot more robust in wet weather.

Have a look at some of Beth Chatto's designs.

And then would you keep the soil bare, or top with gravel?

Thanks, I do like that style of planting.

I'm going to plant it for wildlife, and I want it to look wild and casual.
There's a video here on a wildlife garden from Alexandra Campbell. The garden featured is bigger than yours but you might get some good tips.

Oh, that video is very inspiring! My whole garden is about 10m x 13m, wider than it is long, so from a design perspective it's tricky. Lots of great things in there to think about. I think a deck path will chop up the space too much, but it looks lovely.