I live in North Carolina and have purchases a house. My backyard is good sized but it has NOTHING in the area of vegetation. I would like to plant trees, bushes, perenials, etc... that would make my yard more inviting to guests and birds. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I have two suggestions.

1 is to go out in the rural "wild" local area and see what grows out there naturally. Many of the wild plants AKA WEEDS are pretty and make for a beautiful garden.

2. I would strongly urge you to go to a local nursery and speak with a person there who would be most savvy on local climate and soil conditions and would be able to point out available stocks in their own store/lot.

These two sources of information will give you many, many options. From there you need to lay out your design on paper and get a good idea of the adult size of these plants.

Another alternative is to hire a gardener who will help you to design a garden based on your needs. You do not have to hire them to do the work if you want to do the planting yourself, however their advice and knowledge will help you a lot more than you can imagine.

And of course you can always have a look around and see what plants are flourishing in other gardens nearby The other place to try is whatever local horticultural/ garden club or society there is . Everyone there will have tales to tell about success and disaster with plants. The two problems you get with nurserymen are 1)they exist to make a profit and so may be a little optimistic: they will tend to say that something will 'certainly' grow when they should say 'likely' or 'possibly' or 'it depends' 2) they have the habit of showing plants that are in flower now, whenever 'now' is. That makes an attractive display and the customers walk away with instant flowers. It's no good to you as a gardener starting from scratch (unless you want a garden which only flowers in the month you visited the nursery )