New House - New Garden - New Gardener!

Welcome aboard @Ironchest

I am sure you will get plenty of good advice here, and hopefully we will have the pleasure of your company for years to come.

With reference to your lawn, you are probably best advised by one of our resident experts @Sheal - she will keep you right

As for your flower beds, if they are muddy (I assume clay?) then that suggests that they are in need of plenty of organic matter before being planted up. If it were mine, I would be adding the organic matter in the coming weeks to allow it to work in with the existing soil over winter and then with a bit of digging over in spring, it should be ready to take whatever plants you want to plant there. Organic matter can be anything from home made compost, well rotted manure (horse or chicken seem to be about the best), to 'bought' compost that you buy in bags from the garden centre. For the purposes of improving the soil structure, I wouldn't be too fussy which Multi-Purpose Compost to use, as you are almost certainly going to add more compost around the plants when planting up the flower bed next spring - best just to see what offers are on at your local garden centre.

If you put your approximate location into your GC profile, it will help us all to help you by giving an indication of what your soil type is generally like, and what your weather is like too.

 

Hi IC, welcome to Gardeners Corner. Well, as you probably know there is no such thing as an permanently lasting "instant garden".
Turf will take a little while to settle but it does need to be kept watered during the first month. Bare patches can be reseeded by mixing grass seed with some damp compost and sprinkling it over the affected area.....bearing in mind the birds will be there if you don't put some sort of net covering down!!!
For the flower bed it is best to obviously have a fertile, good draining soil. Also it would be nice if you knew what "ph" your soil is....i.e: Acid, Neutral or Alkaline???. Armed with that knowledge you'll know what plants will be fairly happy growing in the soil.

Does that include the flower bed area? When I bought my new house [many Moons ago!!] I was faced with the typical mess the builders leave, compressed soil, clay, brick, cement, buried plastic sheeting. When I got rid of all that I ordered 92 ton of top soil which, when put down, covered the garden with around 1 inch depth of soil, so I had to put another 90 ton down. But even that wasn't enough to give me a instantly fertile soil, especially as I garden on top of around 300' to 450' of sand [I have a old Roman Sand Quarry not 50 yards from the front of my house!]. It has taken years of adding compost from my compost heap, old compost emptied from containers and pots, the Green House etc, plus Horse Manure from the many Stables nearby.
So if you only have what you think is a few inches of viable soil you could add some more but buying commercial compost is, in my opinion, expensive and it will
disappear over the years. I think you just need to re-invigorate your flower bed every year with any old compost you spare, and if you haven't got a Compost Heap then I would make one.