I have recently taken up tenancy in a semi-detatched victorian
labourer's cottage on the entrance track to a farm. The 'garden'
consists of a 4x4m patch of "grass" between the house and a huge
drainage ditch (there is a holly bush and some other large shrub near
the top of the slope down to the ditch that acts as a boundary) and
various small borders between the house and the track on the other two
sides. The house is roughly square, with a porch built out of the
longest side. Poking around in the weeds covering the "grass" I found
semi-circular sunken areas of soil in the corners where the porch
meets the main wall, which I've assumed are the remains of
long-submerged flowerbeds. I spent two evenings a week ago digging out
one of those beds, and it's fairly sizeable - a quarter circle of
about 1.5m radius on each side of the porch.

There are two main areas of gardenable space - the "grass" between the
house and the ditch, and a long, thin flowerbed under the kitchen
window, parallel to the farm track. There are no delimited boundaries
anywhere - not even between our garden and the garden belonging to the
tenants next door. I'm assuming the boundary lies at the edge of the
area they've mowed and where my weeds begin. The other three sides are
bounded by the farm track - which is concreted on one side, and
gravelled on the second.

The "grassed" area consists of nettles and dandelions, with thin
straggled bits of grass at the edges. The area is shaded by the corner
of the house in the morning, and gets full sun from about 3pm onwards,
so the ground is normally wet underfoot until that point. The area
under the kitchen window gets full sun all day.

I spent a couple of hours last week trying to dig up some of the
nettles at the edge of the "grassed" area to see if it was possible to
remove them without sacrificing what little grass remains. However, I
discovered that there is a web of inch thick nettle roots about 20cm
below the soil surface, and that if I tried pulling them up, the
result looks like the surface of the moon. Am I right in concluding
it's better to redo the lawn from scratch?

I consulted with our landlord, who is willing to run his rotorvator
(what is this?) over our "grassed" area, which he says will let us
seed the lawn again. However, I'm dubious as to whether this will get
rid of the nettles or just distribute their roots more widely round
the garden and let them take over even more space. I'm interested in
gardening, but my skill and experience are close to zero. I mastered
the arts of mowing the lawn and removing pests from the rosebush with
a water pistol in our previous house, but not much else. We have a
handheld fork and trowel and a pair of gloves, but nothing else in the
way of equipment.

I'm looking for suggestions/advice on how to deal with the "grassed"
area, as we'd like to be able to walk on it in bare feet eventually
and sit out there if the weather is nice. Also, any advice on plants
would be welcome, since the weeds had completely choked everything in
the flower beds once they're removed, I will have a blank slate to
work with. I'd like something that's reasonably hardy, as I'm an
expert at killing houseplants and would prefer something that has a
chance of surviving my tender ministrations. We're intending to live
in this house for two years, so something that would produce nice
results in that timeframe would also be appreciated - we'll be leaving
behind the results of my work for the next tenants, but it would be
nice to be able to enjoy it ourselves as well!