Replaces late-lamented full-grown bay

Meet our new baby bay tree

It wasn’t delivered by a stork, but a newborn baby is putting down roots near the main gate.

Planted next to the corpse of our late-lamented towering bay tree, the new baby bay is a gift from gardener Stephanie, plot #27.

Stephanie purchased the tree at a garden supply shop to replace the old bay, which finally gave up the ghost last winter, victim of an earlier cold snap and a former gardener who attacked it with a chain saw.

“The loss of the old tree is really a shame,” Stephanie said. “I used to harvest so many bay leaves from it for my cooking.”

The old bay, fully grown after more than 20 years, had a near-death experience in January 2024, when the thermometer dropped to -10.6°C, Vancouver’s coldest since 1978.

What finally killed it, however, was a chain saw attack by a gardener last year who, thinking they were “pruning” it, more or less delivered the killing blow.

“It wasn’t a prune job so much as a hack job,” said Jan, garden chair, who loved the tree.

Last season, a few promising shoots continued to sprout from a couple of the leftover stumps, but seem to have been killed off last winter.

The new tree, which will need at least three years before producing edible leaves, has been planted nearby.

“It will probably need some TLC to get through any cold days in wintertime,” said gardener Stephanie. “Probably we’ll have to wrap it up just to be on the safe side.”

Bay trees originate in the Mediterranean region and can only comfortably handle lows of about -5°C, when they begin to suffer leaf damage.

And bay trees are notoriously slow-growing. So ours will not regain the former glory of its predecessor for many years.