Woodland garden

This is my thicket.

We're looking at roughleaf dogwood, yaupon holly, behind that is dwarf palmetto, Mexican buckeye,  and somewhere back there is an American beauty berry bush. In the foreground, we have turk's cap (just starting to get some height, but no flowers yet), widow's tears taking over, and in the very front some cedar sage and lyre leaf sage. The cedar sage is blooming beautifully, but I don't see many blooms on the lyre leaf. So... what to do with all this? I'm thinking to scale back some of this growth. I'm just going to have to start curating and pulling up some of the self-seeded plants. I'd like to create a little garden path that I can walk on to get to the back and tend to all the plants in the very back. I guess I'll use some paving stones. This might be a summer project.