Beauty is in the eye of the beholder ... I’d love to have a characterful corner like that in my garden ... and I just love Ivy-leaved toadflax which is what I guess grows on your wall in the summer.
I’d tidy the area, repairing any unsafe areas of brickwork but not overdoing it. Thick heavy pointing absolutely ruins the appearance of old walls.
Then I’d edge the gravelled area with attractive old tile edging ... you can find odds and ends at salvage yards etc.
I’d get some old terracotta pots, even old chimney pots, galvanised buckets, watering cans etc and in the dimmer plant them up with pelargoniums, trailing nasturtiums, calendulas and other summer bedding.
It’ll look gorgeous. 😍
And remove some of the toadflax if there’s too much, but not all of it ... it will soften the appearance of the brickwork and harmonise the whole area.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
One thing not to do is grow anything so high it blocks the view. From what we can see it would be useful by way of borrowed landscape if linked properly with well spaced plants the height of the wall.
I think the garden looks fine. I agree about getting rid of the gravel and either planting up the wall or putting up some high trellis to give some extra height / privacy from the footpath. Nothing I can see that isn't fairly quickly fixed. It's fun that you have a new bed to play with.
The plant growing in it is likely to be Centranthus ruber, which, like Antirrhinum, Erigeron karvinskianus and toadflax, adores the gaps in an old wall. I agree with what others have said about making this a feature--it really could be very charming when tidied up with different gravel and some well-chosen pots. So, when sorting the repointing, try to leave some gaps where you can continue to have plants growing in and on the wall, and it would be advisable to use lime mortar, which will continue to allow that sort of 'vertical gardening'. But I also agree that point no. 1 is ensuring the stability and safety of the wall--especially as it looks to be a retaining wall.
Adding on what others have suggested, pull out all the bits currently there, leave the wall as is, remove the gravel and weed barrier. Put a bag or two of compost on top, fork over the surface, and put on new quality weed barrier. Buy yourself the largest most beautifully glazed frost-proof bottomless pot, cut a hole in the fabric to accommodate the bottom, and plant yourself a lovely tree that would be suitable for a bottomless pot. Cover over the area with some nice slate chips or other dark color stone. Find a few other pots that match your first and pot up with spring bulbs in a tucked away corner until they start to grow.. then put them out for the display. You can either then plant them elsewhere once they've died back or compost them, and then put the pots away until the fall. The tree will need watered for a few years, but eventually it should be okay unless it's been dry for a bit. It will always need more maintenance than an in ground tree, but much less than a pot one. And a few pots of spring bulbs are fun, as much else isn't going yet, but are out of sight once the hard graft gardening starts.
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I’d tidy the area, repairing any unsafe areas of brickwork but not overdoing it. Thick heavy pointing absolutely ruins the appearance of old walls.
And remove some of the toadflax if there’s too much, but not all of it ... it will soften the appearance of the brickwork and harmonise the whole area.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.