Ideas what to do with this space?

[FourOclock]

We have an area in our front garden that up until last year was our vegetable patch, but this year we grew veg in containers elsewhere which has worked really well for a lot less maintenance so we've decided to carry on with that method moving forward. Now we are stuck what to do with the old vegetable patch.

It is on a slope and north facing, although still gets a lot of sun as there isn't much overlooking it. It's quite far to water it (we have to connect two hoses together for them to reach) so something that ideally doesn't need constant watering.

The part above it is a border with a gravel seating area in the middle (it's a bit overgrown at the moment and I want to eventually have a low box hedge or similar around the edges to neaten it up a bit but you get the idea) and then at the back we have a patio with comfortable seating, veg, play area for the children, and a bank of herbs/flowers, plus a flat field for ball games etc. We don't have a gate at the bottom and deliveries etc come up this drive so the front isn't really a child friendly part of the garden (children are under 4)

Any ideas of a fairly low maintenance way to use this area? A bit of maintenance is fine but July/August is harvest for us so daily weeding/watering etc is a bit much at this time of year. I'm not mad keen on just grassing it because mowing with three kids when I can't hear if they've gone down to the road is a pain, plus I'm a bit over grass, it always just ends up like straw at this time of year looking a bit rubbish! We considered a different type of lawn, like a thyme lawn or similar but not sure if that will look odd in a random square surrounded by normal grass.

Another idea was to just plant it with wildflower and mow a path through it, or to plant some dwarf fruit trees in it with wildflower surrounding. Fruit is the one thing we don't have planted at the moment mainly because we haven't found anywhere in the garden we want to look at a fruit cage

Very welcome to all kinds of suggestions!

I would make it into a gravel garden. Cover with membrane to stop weeds and then cover with gravel. Then make holes through the gravel and plant drought tolerant plants. Look up gravel garden on Google and look through images. Beth Chatto had a lovely gravel garden. Look her up. Here is one photo of her garden. Search fro drought tolerant plants. Grasses are good too.hope that helps

Ah that does look lovely! I will pitch the idea to DH, does sound very low maintenance but still more interesting than grass. But we have stones out the back for the kids to play in and they drive DH mad when they get moved around the garden so he might not be mad keen if I suggest more 😂 we'll see

It does look like a lovely spot for a few fruit trees with a wildflower meadow underneath, I have to say.

Having had a gravel garden, I would say that although lovely they are not as low maintenance as they are touted to be. I found that stubborn weeds grew straight through the weed suppressing membrane and became absolutely impossible to get out.

If I were doing it again, I would make sure I really clear the site of perennial weeds, I would give the weed suppressing membrane a miss, and I would plant really, really densely to reduce weed growth.

Wildflower patch would be wonderful. Lots of companies do seed mixes, or there’s this https://wildflowerturf.co.uk/products/ It would be a great opportunity to provide pollinators with food plants.
Depends on your own style and taste, but I don’t like gravel gardens. To me they look artificial and contrived. Gravel migrates everywhere if you’re not careful. And I would not want a plastic membrane in my garden. I’ve seen so many areas planted through membranes, including professionally done ones, where the membrane ends up exposed so you get a mess of torn membrane showing. As @CatherinedeBourgh said, you get breakthrough of weeds anyway.

You could put an orchard in. If you plant plenty of trees then there will be loads of fruit for you, the kids and wildlife without fruit cages. Although I have to admit, a beautiful gravel garden would probably look much nicer.

We get wild seed mixes and similar on the farm so getting wildflower seed is nice and easy and low cost, we can just use whatever is left over, and I like the idea of mowing a path or two through it to try and join it up with the bottom half of the garden. DH pulled a very unimpressed face at the gravel garden, but the children would just transport it all over the garden with various toy diggers and probably leave us looking at plastic membrane and grass full of stones 😂