New gardener - advice on bringing life back to the garden appreciated

Hi everyone,

When we moved into our first home in Bristol we neglected the garden for a while whilst we sorted the house out. When we moved on to tackling the garden we found that our flower beds were full of weeds and as dry as the Sahara. I believe the soil here is clay as it dries and cracks in slightest whiff of sunshine; our garden is west facing so its in pretty much constant sunlight.

To kill off the weeds I used glyophosate. Now I'm left with dead, dry weeds and dry soil which is full of rocks and snail shells (they were there before I used glyphosate).

My first idea was to dig out the top layers of soil to get rid of the dry, rocky stuff and put in lots of compost and top soil to bring back some nutrients and moisture. I'm not sure if thats the best method or whether I need fertilizer or mulch etc.

So as I said, I'm super green to gardenering so any advice on gardenening and kick starting our flowers beds making into life would be massively appreciated.

Lawn is also in need of TLC but thats another matter for another day.

Many thanks,

TheGreenGardener