Oh Boy! I don't think it is quite as bad as it looks, however.

I am a novice and just cannot tell what is weed and what is not.>>We all are/were. The only way is to dig in and learn. Ask a neighbor with a nice flower garden, grab examples of things you don't recognize and take them to the local Extension office for an ID or to your local Weed and Pest office.

Also if the last choice, should I do it now or wait until another season of the year?>> Do it now. Waiting will only make it harder/worse.

Give it some water to make sure the ground is moist, then wait a day or two so the ground isn't saturated. Then start pulling. A few hints I would go by: Start with the grasses. Grasses look like one of the dominant weeds in your picture. I don't see any ornamental grasses, but I'm not too fond of them anyway so would just remove all the grasses first.

Then go after the broadleaves. Things blooming that you like or the roses or growing on the trellis probably stay. The evergreen in the corner would stay. Many of the perennial flowers growing in there are probably growing in clumps, so I would tend to leave those until I had identified them or gone through a season to see if they were anything I like. The left foreground of the picture has something with a long, deeply cut/lobed leaf, rather bluish green. That looks like wild lettuce--it goes. Right next to it, overhanging the black plastic, is a roundish green leaf. That looks like mallow--that goes too.

Once you get the grasses and wild lettuce and mallow out, it will look tremendously better and ID'ing the rest will be much simpler. When you pull the weeds, just be sure not to break them off at the surface, get some roots so that you get the crown. That will kill most of the weeds. If you only take the tops and leave the crown at the soil surface, it will regrow.

Good luck. Looks ugly at the moment, but won't take that much effort and it will look an awfully lot better.

Once cleaned out, you can mulch the areas of bare ground to keep the weeds down and plan what you would like it to look like in the future. Once the things you leave have gone through the season so you know whether you like them or not, then remove what you don't, leave or move/reorganize the rest, and start filling in to meet your tastes.

That sure looks daunting. It would be the perfect project for a local group I'm in. Every month (weather permitting) we tackle a neglected bed, many hands make light work. Invite a couple of friends, hopefully gardening friends, over to weed and munch. We usually start at 10AM and finish at noon for lunch. It's amazing how fast it goes and how much fun it is to garden with friends and usually someone can tell if a particular plant is a keeper or a weed.

When you're first starting, just pull what you know for sure are weeds, you can always come back to the questionable plants later. Often when you get a lot of those first weeds out, you can take a step back and it will become clearer what's a weed and what isn't. If in doubt, post a picture of the individual plant here or on the Name That Plant forum. Have fun!

Just a tip about weeding..I always use a large shovel and dig it in next to what I think is the weed..loosen the dirt with your foot on the shovel and then you can pull the weed out with all the roots or most of them..Then shake off the dirt from the roots. You need to get down and get the roots or they just grow back. Good luck!
Joann

I would look for someone who could identify your garden worthy plants. Perhaps there is a local garden club you could contact or an employee at a nursery or a neighbor who has a really nice garden. Most gardeners are sharing people and wouldn't mind giving advice. Are there any nice gardens on your street?

If you were to buy a roll of colored plastic tape, someone could mark the good plants - tie a piece of tape around the stems. You could then weed whack, rake and bag what is weedy. That way less seed pods will germinate. You could lay newspaper on the ground and then mulch on top of the newspaper to keep weeds from re-emerging.

It appears you have some sapling trees and those should be pulled up because they will re-sprout if cut off.

Any chance the previous owners can tell you what's there or perhaps even provide pictures of the area when it isn't overgrown?

Going thru the same and this is what my daughter did
1. pulled and dug out the weeds and sprayed with Tordon
2.she had marked all my lilies and coneflowers
3.in Fall after all blooms we are going to dig out the bulbs and spray etc,matter what my husband wants to do with that hillside,its his now. It was invaided by quack grass and tha'ts a headace. I can't keep that area up anymore and no help

Thanks everyone for the advice. I decided to just "dig in" and as one poster suggested. It didn't take more than a couple of hours before it looked tremendously better. I got the grasses and everything I knew were weeds out and few I was fairly sure were weeds - that left a much more manageable remainder that does not look terribly daunting. Now I can work on identifying the remainders.

I see the light : ) Thanks again.