Starting front garden again

I'm going to dig up the front garden. Currently it is almost exclusively just bad lawn.

I don't know exactly what the plan is yet. I have some rough outline goals but no details yet. This is where I hope you lot can help with ideas.

The garden is a bit of a heat trap, being sheltered and South south east facing. That also means it's prone to drying out.

My top level goals are:
1. It must be fun or interesting for the kids. This one is easier than it sounds because of the next criteria.

2. It must be attractive to good wildlife, especially bumble bee, moths and butterflies. Our resident hedgehog should also be accommodated.

3. I want it to produce a lot of edible stuff, but without being obvious to uneducated thieving gits. Lots of herbs will be going in. Probably rainbow chard. Anything else that is food but not obviously so?

4. It has to be pretty and fairly low maintenance over as much of the year as possible.

5. It has to be cheap. This bit shouldn't be too difficult because I've found a local nursery that sells plants very, very cheaply.

All this in a fairly small area. Probably about 5 metres by 3 metres at a guess.

Any suggestions or thoughts?

 

I'm sure Google will turn up loads of suggestions

 

What's the soil like, Clue?

 

FC, kind of yes to all of that. The kids will be fully involved throughout the whole endeavour. The edibles will be hidden as far as practical, but hidden in plain sight. Ie I want to use stuff which the average toe rag wouldn't recognise. I'm not worried about people who recognise the less obvious, as they're not typically the kind of person that steals just for fun.

Noisette, the soil is pretty rubbish, clay with no structure left in it. This doesn't worry me though, because I thought about either enriching the lot, or sinking large containers to create pockets of specific conditions.

 

Probably pull your front wall/railings down, then chuck a load of stone all over the garden so numerous cars can park all over it, that's what most people seem to do these days.