backyard lawn conversion

I posted this to the native gardening sub, but I figured ya'll would appreciate the process more.

I started this project after moving in to my house a few years ago. I redid the front yard first, because I really wanted to not have to buy a lawnmower and I didn't care about having long, terrible grass in the backyard while I focused on that. The front yard is all just regular flower beds.

I also didn't really know what I wanted to do with the backyard except that I wanted it to be functional for me. I put some cardboard down to smother the turf grass, because that's pretty much the only thing I was sure about. That stuck around the whole first year. There's still some grass there, but it's fairly sparse now.

After a lot of diagramming and some living in the house, I decided I wanted a rain garden near the swamp cooler runoff so water didn't sit near the house because it dumps water there every hour during the summer, a couple paths around the yard, a small "snack garden", a little gathering/sitting area in the far back that was hidden from the house by taller plants where I could hide with my work computer, a swing, and a little vegetable garden area.

It's on its second year now and this is mostly natives. The bumblebees are practically pets at this point and I need to get them only the best. I have some non-native ground cover because I like creeping thyme and ice plants, and I kept around the established roses and ancient apple tree.

I've added a few things to my original plan. Notably I am trying to establish a yarrow/(wild) mint/violet lawn near the front of my big bed that I can to be able to lay in a bed of low-growing, soft, fragrant plants and experience an existential crisis or maybe pull up a lawn chair, idk. If you have any suggestions for full sun, low water, US native groundcover that smells nice, please let me know.

I still need to set up a swing and my second vegetable bed, as well as better supporting my trellis, but this project has slowly morphed from being a chaotic mess of boxes to being a fairly decent garden space and I'm very proud of it.

I need to do the big summer chop soon, so I figured it was time to take pictures and show off progress.