@greene your woodland garden is really nice, I like that alot
Yes my goal is to get the front yard flat, and maybe even put in a dry bed along the sidewalk, to shed water before it runs over the sidewalk because the front yard slopes toward the house. House was built in '43 so it doesn't have much crawl area and sits almost smack on the ground. This creates moisture problems under the house.
I went to a lawn and garden show a couple weeks ago, and there was a stump grinding/landscaping service that had a photo album with pictures of past jobs they had did. I can tell you from looking at those pictures that it is possible to take a huge humped up stump with large surrounding side roots, and grind it down and work the soil out so that the yard is re-seeded and within a few months I could not even tell there was a stump looking at the "after" photos. I am sure the charges go up depending on how thorough a job you want. But by renting and doing it yourself you could spend more time on those. The best rate for rental is to get a weekend rental.
