Shimano Tiagra - Install smaller front chainring

I recently bought a used Trek Checkpoint ALR4, with which I’m very satisfied.
The gearing is ok so far for going on plane ground an light uphills, but when going on long and steeper hills it gets really hard to push which I don’t want to sustain on longer rides.

It has a 50 and a 34 tooth chainring in the front and I was looking for a way to replace the 34 tooth chainring with a smaller one. But as far as I can see, I would have to change the whole groupset with both chainrings ant the cranks.

My question is if there is a way to do this without replacing the whole crankset or at least keeping the front derailleur. I couldn’t find any evidence online that this is possible without replacing everything.

EDIT:

Rear Cassette: 10x 11-34.

I’ve got spare a 11-42 rear cassette from my mtb, would this one possibly fit without chainging the derailleur?

Update with the solution I went for:

I changed the rear cassette from 11-34 to 11-36 (CS-HG 81-10) which worked straight out of the box without any adjustments.

For the crankset, I went for the Shimano GRX 2×10 46/30 crankset which was easy to install. I had to shorten the chain by 2 links. It took me quiet a while to adjust the front derailleur and at the point where it shifted correctly, there was some friction when shifting into the higher gears on the bigger front chainring (The chainline of the GRX is 3.4mm wider than the line of the Tiagra crankset). With no possibilities for adjustemnts left, I ended up bending the metal of the derailleur a bit. Im pretty sure every professional would have told me to buy a new derailleur, but now it shifts even better than before all those modifications and the disfigurement that I did to the derailleur is not noticeable if you don’t know it.

I’m pretty happy with the gearing of my new setup.
Costs for the complete conversion approximately 120€ and 2 hours of my time.

Thanks for the help!