If you're interested in having herbs around, I've found Seedsheets to make growing fresh herbs so easy in small spaces! Container gardening is great when you don't have a ton of space, and now I don't have to run out to the store whenever I need a sprig of fresh basil or parsley. What climate zone are you in? Since I experience frost in the winter, I just bring my bucket inside. Seedsheets.com

Here are suggestions for a simple scheme that keeps some lawn. The first thing I would do, though, is bust out the end of the walk (where it meets porch) or maybe the whole walk, and redo it, adding space and width. A skinny walk with little space at the porch makes the whole house look cheaper. If breaking out and redoing is not possible, then find a way to patch on some extra space.

I assume your house is on the right. Right? The most common form of zero lot line is where the edge of the house is on the lot line and your lot goes around the other 3 sides. Each home is set up this way. Looking at the area shown in your pic, it looks like the the home on the left is the one on the lot line (glass block window is a dead giveaway) and the space between the two homes belongs to the home on the right where the a/c compressor is hooked up:) A better way to tell is to look at your survey that you received at closing when you purchased the home. The boundary lines will be clearly marked on the survey. An adequate way to tell is to look at your county property appraisers website where the lot lines are sometimes shown on the aerials. If you are the house on the left, then you probably can't do anything to that side yard since it's not your yard. If you are the house on the right then consider the rocks but install a drain and large enough slabs for the walkway so you can retrieve your lawn mower without difficulty. You will need a professional landscape designer (not the guys that just do maintenance) to get the drainage right. In this insp pic the landscape designer goes into a little detail about the drainage they used for this posted project - click through to see more details

Spread them out on the lawn for an orchard effect and use the border for other kinds of plants - your basic existing problem is you are trying to fit multiple mostly tree shaped = landscape accent point plants into an inadequately large border with a visually distracting, overhanging climber at the back. Plants that in addition to being tree shaped are all going to become tree sized - a couple of those you listed have the genetic programming to fill up half or more of your back yard just by themselves. With fully expressed mango trees for instance becoming neighborhood landmarks visible from some distance.