Ideas for raised bed please

Hello

I am an absolute novice gardener who has recently had a 10x12ft raised bed (the back of it faces north) created which is about 1 foot deep. It is located towards the back of my garden. I'm not sure what I should plant in it. I like the idea of a feature tree which is helpful to birds (growing to around 5 to 7m tall) Surrounded by corokia x vigata frosted chocolate hedging or hawthorn hedgerows planted at the edges mostly all the way around but perhaps leaving a space to walk into the area for pruning. Hope this doesn't look silly? Already have an small acer and some other small plants several feet away planted in other areas in ground.

My garden is probably classed as small to medium. Any suggestions would be helpful please. I'm from the UK. We have a gardener who comes in occasionally to prune things so this would be something he would tend to. thanks

 

Hi @Pepe . Can you offer a bit more info about the bed? Your rough location also helps, because what can survive further south, and do well, won't necessarily work in the north. East and west can be very different too, and the type of soil you have is a factor

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about the back of the bed facing north. Technically - that would mean it was a south facing bed, but other planting or fences/buildings etc also affect the amount of sun or shade a bed gets, as well as how much general exposure it has.
Are the hedging plants already in place, or is that something you want to add? It won't leave a lot of room if there's hedging round the bed, and you'll also need to allow for standing on the bed itself for trimming/pruning that.

 

Birds like crab apples and rowans. Crab apples aren't very fussy, rowans need the right conditions.

A photo of your bed would help too. I'm finding it hard to visualise with hedging all round.

 

It depends what sort of look are you going for? Formal or not?

Hawthorn would be better for wildlife but you would need to let it flower and fruit to have any real benefit, so just once a year. It grows quite quickly up to 2ft a year so would be quite informal looking. It’s also very thorny so trying to keep space for access (on the inside of the bed) would be difficult, you would need an access path of minimum 2, ideally 3ft around the tree. You could just let it grow inwards with all the pruning to the top and outward facing side done from outside of the bed?

 

I'm also not sure if the hedging is going on the outside of the bed, rather than planted into it, so that would make a difference to the amount of room available.