Skip the chips. Stick with grass. Grass is actually very low maintenance so long as your standards are low. I ran a dog boarding kennel for a few years and wood chips are a very bad idea. Our exercise yards were gravel and grass and bare dirt. Wood chips can harbor fleas, and some dogs will eat the chips, and others will refuse to walk on them. Would you, with bare feet? I wouldn't so why would they. Splinters and sharp pieces. Using cedar chips will not repel the fleas as the small pieces will volatilize all the repellant compounds rather quickly. My ideal, with my two medium sized active dogs, when I get my own place, will be to have a graveled dog run they can be confined in while I'm at work. No more tearing up the yard digging after moles and creating muddy race tracks where they tear around corners. Dogs like gravel pretty well, it doesn't harbor fleas, and it's easy to pick up off of. Concrete is low maintenance but most dogs don't like it all that much for lying around on. Then they can enjoy the 'lawn' when I'm home. Like yours, mine is lumpy and weedy. The lumpiness comes from having a lot of fescue and bluegrass in the grass, which form tufts, and the racing dog traffic wears away fine soil particles in between the tufts, leaving low spots in between tufts of grass. More irrigation in summer, and annual top dressing with organic material would help, but it's a rental. Bentgrass works pretty well with dogs as it's a running grass and knits itself together. Where there's a lot of bentgrass the lawn stays together except where they've dug after moles. If your dog is very small then choice of grass doesn't matter so much, but for medium sized and larger dogs, go with bentgrass if you can get it. I have to use a 5ft wire mesh fence with heavy T posts to keep my dogs out of the veggies and rhodie border. Not pretty but the 60 lber will haul herself over anything shorter. A stiffer fence could be shorter I guess, wood or chain link, or even better supported wire mesh, which means wood posts set in concrete. Don't use the cheap fencing stuff, unless your dog is tiny.

Everything gdpossehl said! Plus, I'm in your same area and have the same soil! The original homeowner planted English Ivy and we're breaking our backs getting rid of it! Resist the temptation!! This year, we've had TONS of wild, native violets coming up and I've even been pulling them from the gravel driveway and transplanting them into spots where we've eradicated the ivy. They're a wonderful, native groundcover and look beautiful in garden beds too! I'm big into using natives, so my suggestions will show that. Try Maypop (passion flower vine) along the fence. It grows very quickly, has phenomenal flowers and is evergreen. You can cut it all the way back each year to keep it neat, but no need to. Moss will NOT work with a dog. We have a moss yard and it's super super delicate! The deer tear it up super easily and it gets invaded by weeds that have to be hand-removed (except in the deepest shade like under the canopy of a Japanese maple....the moss looks awesome there!). I definitely think you could do some semi-raised (even just mounded for a more natural look) beds around the edges/corners. Then you could have beautiful native bushes (itea, clethra, viburnum, etc.) grouped with ferns and other shade-lovers. I've found that it's no use to fight the clay! Remember that clay soil has a ton of nutrients! It's just a bit dense for many plants. But not all! There are tons of plants that are clay tolerant. I think your biggest problem is that that soil looks hard-packed. You'll need to loosen it up where you want to plant. I would just dig down a bit and amend with compost and peat. That does the trick for me. Though this nursery doesn't sell to the public, check their site for an amazing assortment of native plants! www.northcreeknurseries.com . You can then check with local nurseries for ones you want, or check online. Good luck!

LOL!! Original post is now almost 18 months old. I would have assumed the OP has already addressed their landscape needs. And if they have not yet, then skip the recommendation for David Austin roses.....or pretty much any other type of roses. Except for a few landscape type roses, they are not at all low maintenance!!

Stepping stones and 'pebbles'/gravel is cheaper. I think synthetic and stepping stones is cleaner and lower maintenance. When you put down gravel the weedcloth underneath the gravel decomposes within a few years and you are supposed to remove the gravel and relay weed cloth..otherwise you get weeds in the gravel. (like what's happening to your bocce ball court) Here is one of ours with synthetic. You don't have to cover the whole area with synthetic you can create planting areas with low maintenance plants.