Advice for rejuvenating neglected bed

Hi all, I got some fantastic friendly advice here about my new lawn last year so I'm back for more!

We have a small plot (roughly 5x2m) out the front of our flat which was totally overgrown with weeds and dead plants, including a large dead shrub. A neighbour complained about it (fair enough) so we had a gardener cut it all away and we can now see what we're dealing with. As you can see, there is still the stump of the shrub, various scraps of grass and weeds, stones, bits of woodchip and some plastic sheeting poking up through the soil.

We want to do something neat, attractive & low maintenance which ideally wouldn't look completely out of place with the surrounding patches in front of the other flats (you can see next door's in the photo)

Is this something a couple of amateurs like us could potentially do ourselves, or should we just pay a professional to dig it all up, remove the stump and start over with new soil and plants? We don't want to spend a fortune but I'm also reluctant to spend time and energy trying to do it ourselves and ending up with something that just needs fixing again in the near future!

Thanks in advance