Find out if your town or county has a "free mulch" or "cheap mulch" progam for residents.

Here, if you take a copy of your water bill (to prove that you pay for trash pick-up) & your driver's license showing an address inside the city limits, you can get free mulch any time the landfill is open, & load it yourself;
on Saturdays, they'll use a front-end loader to load it into your truck or trailer;
if your only vehicle is a sedan, you may work out a deal with a neighbor or co-worker or family member to split a load if they'll drive their truck.

You can also call or visit tree trimming companies, or do what I do & stop & talk to the driver when you see a truck cutting limbs in the neighborhood;
ask if they'll drop off their shredded trimmings at your house "instead of burning gasoline driving all the way to the landfill & having to pay a dumping fee as well".

It doesn't always work, but sometimes it does, & you get a whole dump truck load of material!

Be sure you have a big area where the truck can dump the material.

Lay out the general framework & do the rest a bit at a time, or you're going to get really exhausted & make a really big mess & get frustrated & give up.

First walk the area to decide where you want beds & where you want pathways, & lay out a garden hose or stakes & string to mark the edges.

If you use a garden hose, it's much easier to make changes, & when you've got it the way you want it, use spray paint to mark the lines.

Scrape off the grass on the planned paths (paths need to be about 3' or so wide so you can walk along them with groceries or tools or holding a child's hand without stumbling onto your flowerbeds), stand back, close one eye, & see if it looks right.

Then go inside, walk out the front door, & walk along the paths to get to your car, to the mailbox, etc.

if everything is not exactly right, this is the time to make adjustments!

Be sure that there's room for a lawn mower wherever you leave a grassy area, & if you'll be taking the mower from the shed or garage down a path to get to the grassy area, be sure that the path is wider than the mower!

Also be sure there's a gate that's wide enough for the mower if you'll need to take the mower between front & back yards.

Beds need to be wide enough that they will support a variety of plants, but you need to be able to work them.

One way to "measure" is to kneel at one side of the pathway & reach across as though you're pulling a weed.
Your beds can be as wide as you can comfortably reach, up to twice this width if you can get to the bed from both sides.

On the outside part of the lot, between the drive & the neighbor, this doesn't exactly apply;
those areas are usually too wide to reach all the way across, but not wide enough to put in a walkway.

Use stepping stones for access, & add ornamental trees, birdbaths, garden art, etc, to break up the area, or go all English on it & put in a herbaceous border!

When you're happy with the pathways & the layout of the beds, mulch the paths so you can work in the yard & so you can go from your front door to the drive or the street without wading through dirt or mud.

Now scrape off the top layer of soil in one of your beds,& if the budget runs to it & the soil requires it, put in your soil amendments now, & then add mulch.

This is the easiest time to add edging to define the space;
edging can be metal or pavers or anything, & I once saw an adorable cottage garden with old plates turned on edge & buried about halfway in the ground, but I'm a fan of bricks.

Bricks have depth, dimension, warmth, color, & soul, & if you want to change your arrangement, you won't need a jackhammer to do it.

Even if you decide you want brick paths instead of mulch, you can lay them without mortar;
just level the soil, add a layer of sand for stability, level it, lay the bricks, & pour more sand on top & sweep it into the cracks between the bricks'
water it down to be sure the sand is settled, & add more sand if needed.

If your soil is clay like ours here in north Texas, or rocky like that in San Antonio, that's all you have to do.

If you have sandy or loose soil, you may need to rent a roller to compact & stabilize the soil before you lay the bricks.

You can put a 'wanted' ad on your local freecycle & on craigslist & ask for bricks from demolition or re-modeling sites;
say that you'll pick them up & not make a mess.

& as you drive around the city, be on the look-out for people tearing down or re-modeling old houses;
a nearby church bought 3 really old houses & tore all of them down, & one of them was a brick house!

Now (betcha you thought I'd never get to this, didn't you?), you're ready to add plants.

Sometimes you have to buy plants, but more often than not, I've gotten them via plant swaps & helping neighbors & friends thin their beds, & you can get seeds from dollar stores & plant tomato, pumpkin, eggplant, etc seeds from the vegetables you buy at the grocery store.

While you've been doing all the prep work, you can start your seeds.

Also place freecycle & cl ads asking for plants, & *keep an open mind*;
plants you hadn't thought of may add a filip of color or contrast, & "passalong" plants make charming cottage gardens.

& since passalong plants are the over-abundance from someone's garden, you know they'll thrive in your area!

Again, offer to dig or to thin beds (ie, dig up irises & separate them & re-plant as many as the homeowner wants to keep, etc).

Older gardeners often need their plants thinned, but it's just as hard for them to re-plant as it would be to thin, so it's nice to help them out there as a sort of returning favor for favor.

The last time I ran across a re-habber working on an old house, the roofing crew was dumping shingles on the old irises, & the contractor was going to tear off the front porch & put in a much larger one, so those irises were goners.

He told me I could dig up as many as I could get as long as I stayed out of the way & refrained from stepping on a nail;
so I put on shoes with thick soles & dug out at least 50 historic irises & half a shoebox of lycoris radiata (spider lilies)!

The first year, your perennials & shrubs won't look like much, so seed the quick "bang-for-the-buck", instant gratification annuals pretty heavily.

(Zinnias may be the gardener's very best 'first year' friends:
They grow effortlessly, they bloom profusely, & they re-seed!)

Set out your seedlings & passalongs in groups of at least 3 of a kind, preferably more, preferably an odd number in each group, with shorter plants toward the front & taller ones toward the back for beds that abut the house, fence, or outside edge of the lot.

For beds/borders that are accessible from both sides, put shorter plants along the edges & taller ones in the center.

Put sun-lovers with sun-lovers, shade plants with shade plants, water-loving with water-loving, Mediterranean/herb type plants with each other (they have to have sharp drainage, & they need less water).

Put fragrant plants where you'll pass them & maybe brush them often (thornless ones!).

This method takes more time than the garden "installations" you see on hgtv, & the results are serendipitous, but your only expense is gasoline & maybe some soil amendments, & you get to meet gardeners & have fun.