A friend has just asked me this. Not a bay tree, I don't think - just a plain old laurel. She thinks it may be stunting other nearby plants. Anyone know about this?
It's perfectly possible, as some plants produce substances that do inhibit growth. I don't know whether laurel does, but it's poisonous stuff. The leaves contain cyanide.
I don't have any hard evidence, but I suspect laurel does not go well with many other plants. I see them quite a lot in Danish gardens, and there is hardly ever other plants close to it.
It might be the same with bay, although I am not so sure. I have seen small groves of wild bay in Rijeka (Croatia), and it occurred to me there was nothing else growing with it.
By the way, I was given a bay sapling in Croatia last year, and I brought it home. It is in a deep pot on its own..................but not growing at all!
It`s an old wives` tale. The only way that a laurel is like to harm adjacent plants is if either (a) the root system grows so extensive that it starves out the other plant, or (b) the topgrowth of the laurel smothers it, but almost any other large dense shrub would do the same thing. I have probably a couple of hundred laurels in my garden, as both hedges and freestanding shrubs, and provided they`re not allowed to overgrow other plants they cause no problems, and it`s surprising the number and variety of weeds that grow out from under the laurel hedges.