Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Fuck. That is actually perfectly nice, I can see why nobody cba to quote. You should see our front.

On kids, for some reason with me No.1 is happy to potter by themselves 80% of the time. My battle is the difference between my risk assessment and my OH's. I let them play with my impact driver for e.g. (not the drill obvs, because that would be silly) and got told off.

I'm finding that as they're getting bigger their ability to fuck themselves up is growing. 18-24m seemed to be a sweet spot of moderately acceptable damage to self and others.

If it were me something like:

Remove front hedge, replace with Corten steel planter of bamboo.
Brick weave paving (or whatever you dancy)around circumference of garden
Replace gravel with four square raised beds with brick weave paving between (or could keep gravel to make cheaper)
Bin store at left hand edge and replace ropey hedge with some more colourful plants