Hi--I'm new. Thanks so much in advance for your help, because I'm not sure how exactly to approach this. I live right on the line for zone 5a, but we sometimes get temps in the zone 4 range, so I usually plant for zone 4. We bought an acreage/old farmstead last year with perennial beds that need work everywhere, but one in particular is a mess. It's huge--roughly 20 x 50 feet in the center of a farmyard circle drive, and its filled with a combination of perennials, brome grass, and button weeds. The perennials that I could identify last fall included roses (meidilands, knockouts, nearly wilds, and some I wasn't sure of), bearded iris, salvia, daylilies, and peonies. The woman who lived there for decades was quite a gardener, but she passed away, then her husband died, and the house sat empty for several years. The house was cared for, but the gardens were not.

Where do I start? I want to save as many of the perennials as I can, but the perennials are growing in the brome grass. My thought was to start potting up what I could in early spring as it comes up, and when the flowers are out of the bed, repeatedly spray the whole thing with roundup, till and add amendments, and keep spraying. Is there an easier way? Rather than potting, should I temporarily transplant the flowers to the vegetable garden, and then move them back when the bed is clean? How early can I start transplanting or potting? Will I be able to move the flowers back this year, or will it take an entire year to clean this up? Would it help to also do an application of preen? Button weeds are easy to pull, but I don't know where to start with the brome grass.

Thanks so much in advance for your help. Once the bed is planted, I'll be sure to put down a weed barrier and mulch so it doesn't happen again. I'm not a novice gardener, but I'm not a pro either.

Any and all advice would be wonderful. I plan on mulching