New house, with backyard

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I would recommend a few things:

First, determine a few key factors about your yard: How sunny is it (full day sun? Afternoon shade? Morning Shade? Shady all day?)? What is the soil like (sandy, clay? Somewhere in between?)? Those are going to determine what plants are able to thrive where you are.

Then, find out what your local keystone species are where you live. If you're in America, here's a few links to get you started:

https://www.nwf.org/Garden-for-Wildlife/About/Native-Plants/keystone-plants-by-ecoregion

https://xerces.org/publications/plant-lists

https://homegrownnationalpark.org/keystone-plant-guides/

Find plants from the above that will like your conditions.

Also, look for your local native plant group- Usually called something like Native Plant Salvage/Foundation/Society. They will have people who are excited about native plants, and eager to share information, and they often have plant sales. I would not recommend going to a standard commercial nursery because usually they don't know much about native plants, and if they have any the selection is small.

Edit: I'm a nosy person, so I see you are in California- check out https://www.calscape.org/ they have been useful for me.

Several nature preserves in my area have native plant sales as fundraisers every spring. Check their calendars. Events like "Earth Day" festivals can also be good places to find folks selling starts.

https://www.sacvalleycnps.org/stockton-sub-chapter/

https://calscape.org/california-nurseries

also:
r/Permaculture
r/NoLawns
r/FoodNotLawns
r/NativePlantGardening

and most importantly, enjoy the journey, then share your joy with others.

Fingers crossed I'll be in a similar situation soon. I assume just look up your area or state for sustainable plants

is there a botanical garden near you? that might give you some clues, and is a good way to spend an afternoon.

My state's .gov website has a handy reference for landscaping with native plants, including a useful chart for water/sun/soil conditions that do best with each plant. maybe try searching "landscaping with native plants <state>" and that will yield results

It can be surprisingly hard to find native plants for sale. Nurseries often have no idea, and even the nearby Botanic Garden was no help.

I know my local Native Plant Society has regular plant sales. Maybe see if there is one in your area.

Look for native edibles. You, your neighbors and animals can enjoy them.

My city has this info on their website. You can google CITY + native plants or PROVINCE/STATE + native plants.

You can allow the stuff to grow and see what bushes grow, then cut around the bushes to help the grow faster .

You can also go to local woods around your house and dig up plants and bring them back to your yard and plant them. Jjst make sure to till the land nicely and don’t plant anything directly into grass

Go to/call your nearest commercial garden or similar and ask.

Adding to the good links already shared, Pollinator Posse has useful info on native plants in Northern California. They also link to partner sites like Calscape and pollinator.org for ecoregional planting guides, where I searched for Stockton and found this guide for the California Dry Steppe Province / Central Valley.

Why all natives? Don’t be too puritanical. Native species evolve over time. If I were you I’d focus on creating a food forest on permaculture principles. Sustainable and green and lush. Enjoy.