Dense planting

[MeOnSea]

Our very long garden is looking neglected. We have some lovely large shrubs but in between are overrun with weeds and grasses. I don’t want to use chemicals and think I want to weed by section and then plant fairly densely to affect the balance (I have ground elder so know it’s unlikely I’ll be able yo completely get rid). I also have some wood chip I can use.

the borders are so long that I won’t be able to do it all in one go.

does anyone have any ideas for relatively cheap plants I could use to get that density of planting at this time of year and in the coming months?

some spots are very sunny/dry soil, others are in shade.

im a novice gardener so appreciate all advice. Also if you’d suggest plants vs seeds

any suggestions gratefully received, thank you

If you want to get on top of established weeds you'll need to put them in darkness for at least a month. Put thick (or several layers of) cardboard over the beds and weight it down with stones. As you get time to do detailed weeding, take up each section of cardboard. Towards the end it will be fairly fragile cardboard so you can dig that in if it's easier.
Plant-wise, you'll need something like London Pride if you want to stop weeds resprouting, but that has finished being pretty for this year and is just leaves now.
Next spring, once you've got on top of the first weed-dig and pulling up all the new weed shoots that will emerge in the next couple of months, you can think about what you actually want.
Usually people start with low stuff at the front of a border, then something a bit bigger behind and a feature shrub in the middle, but it depends on the position and shape of the bed.
If you want a quick cheap border-filler for the summer, just get a few supermarket herb plants and break each one into quarters before replanting. You'll get at least a month of herbs before they go to seed.

Hardy geranium Rozanne has something in the roots that actually inhibits ground elder growth (obviously weed it out first as you're planning to! ) it's a great plant, fills in gaps beautifully and flowers May- September

I was going to say geraniums too - spread very well and fairly easy to pull up as and when you decide you want to plant something else.

Deadnettle is good ground cover for shady areas.

Oh you'll have to buy plants and it's happy in sun or shade! Not the very cheapest but it'll keep bulking out so you can divide. I'd plant up one section and follow the advice above about cardboard for the rest.

I have a densely planted cottage garden out the front. We only redesigned it from the original planters we already had this spring, reusing a lot of the soil once we’d dismantled them, and it’s already established and looks amazing.
I have hollyhocks, sunflowers, delphiniums, foxgloves, ornamental grasses, a LOT of hotlips(these are great as get big quick), alliums, lupins, sweet peas, nasturtiums, poppys, cornflowers, lobelias, lavender, pansies, scabious, London pride, nemesia. I have to pick at the weeds every single evening when I water it.

Sedum spectabile (properly Hylotelephium spectabile now) is really easy to propagate, good for autumn colour and butterflies and good foliage before that

I'm a novice gardener so appreciate all advice.
There are some good suggestions above. As a tip, it might help your googling if you know the jargon. What you are looking for is normally called 'ground cover'.
Here's some examples RHS GW

Do be careful what you wish for. One woman's 'dense planting' is another woman's 'thug plant'!

Oh, thank you so much for all the replies, going to have a proper read through and do some research. I think the cardboard and tackling in sections is a really good one, as I’ve not been able to keep on top of it all.

Great tip about that geranium, thanks @napody , I hadn’t come across that one in my search for natural ways of dealing with ground elder.

thanks also for that link @senua and the warning. Will try to do a bit more research to avoid recreating the problem, albeit with prettier plants!

Cerastium is another one that is good for ground cover like geranium. It has white flowers but looks fairly good when not in flower also.

I did the cardboard thing this year. Would recommend it so far. It's cheap and more environmentally friendly than a plastic weed membrane. I covered my cardboard with bark chips.