Help! No idea what to do.

[Saramichala]

Hello all, we moved into our place earlier this year and our garden is a mess. We had to clear out the back half as you can see and would now like to lay down grass as a quick fix before the summer is over and the whole place is over run with weeds.
Please can anyone offer advice on what exactly we need to do? Also would like to prune back all the flowerbeds but can't tell what are flowers and what are just beautiful-looking weeds..

Thanks in advance

A weed is simply a plant you don’t want where it is. There’s no formal definition that this plant is always a weed and this plant is not (except for about 5 species mentioned in weed control legislation). So if they’re beautiful, let them grow. The orangey-red thing is Crocosmia, by the way.

Most of the things in the border appear to be garden plants. Looks like there may bean Acanthus, too blurred to tell for sure. The dark pinky red with dangling flowers is a Fuchsia. Again, not good enough to be sure, but looks if you left-it you’d have a good crop of foxgloves next year.

For the bit where you want the grass, you need to clear the area, then put down some sandy soil to even out the area and firm it down by treading on it, then you can roll out some turf on the top. It will need watering regularly for the rest of the summer and you won't be able to walk on it for a couple of weeks.

With the rest of the garden, I would just leave it for this year and try to work out what different plants are and whether you like them or not.

Some closer photos of various of the plants would allow for identification.

The bed on the left in the first photo looks like it's got quite a bit of bramble, you'll probably want to get rid of that - get some good thick gloves!
The second photo also looks like mostly bramble but there's a lovely bit of wisteria coming down from the top right corner.

Third photo, front left looks like sedum spectabile (aka hylotelephium spectabile), if so it's a keeper, nice pink or white flowers later in the season which are very popular with bees and butterflies. Not sure about the pink flowers at the back, maybe a phlox but it's pretty and doesn't look at all weedy.