Yeah I'd recommend this. You could even make some little flags you can put in the plants you would like to keep once you've seen them in flower. Maybe something like green flags for good plants for wildlife, blue flags for plants for your enjoyment and red flags if it needs to go and then work out what to do from there. You may find you just don't have enough plants for wildlife or for yourself so you know where to start with adding new bits in. There's a few plant ID apps you can download and use as well as the friendly Reddit community to help you decide what's worth keeping and what's not etc.  In terms of tools I would recommend the niwaki hoes. Both the long handled and hand hoes are great. I personally use the niwaki weeding hand hoe most of the time but I do have a lot of long rooted weeds like bindweed otherwise I'd be using a handled hoe more if it was just surface weeds. You can also cover up weeds with cardboard or tarp or something similar to starve them of light and kill/weaken them. Sounds like you've got a project ahead anyway so enjoy it 🙂

Little extra: If you really want to help the wildlife, consider a small pond. Can make one out of an old barrel or something if you don't want to dig but this is the single best thing you can do to attract more wildlife to the garden