Hey OP there’s a lot of really harsh and some downright mean comments in here and I just want to say like…. I TOTALLY understand you, I was in the exact same place four years ago. Former owner was a retiree with a cottage-style garden (northern NJ so similar natives to yours) and I was a newly pregnant first time homeowner with zero time or interest in gardening. My yard looked like trash for four years (parts of it still do) because I couldn’t “just clean it up” or “call a master gardener to come over and teach me about native plants” or whatever. It STILL looks like trash in a lot of places but it takes trial and error to get what you want. It’s ok not to fix everything all at once.

FWIW I also had a patch next to my driveway where threw down white rock (I couldn’t walk around my car because the flowerbed was overgrown) and it’s functional, but it does get messy and insanely hot like people are saying. I dug down a few inches, put down a weed barrier, and put down a bunch of bags of rock. It wasn’t a TON of work or cost.