The Great Bay Tree Mystery

THE GREAT BAY TREE MYSTERY: a Tresco conundrum We’ve been coming to Tresco for 30 years now, scary when you think about it and realise that some of the pillars of today’s island community weren’t even a twinkle in their mother’s eyes at the time.  We turn up at least once and often twice or more times a year and count many of the islanders as friends with whom many a glass has been sunk over these years. Yes, obviously, we’ve seen changes and people come and go but the timeless beauty of the islands, the tranquillity, the time we have to ‘stand and stare’ never changes.  As keen gardeners, the Abbey Gardens are always one of the first places to return to, sitting on “Frank and David’s” bench, looking out over the garden, or down the channel to St Mary’s and St. Agnes and remembering the chats we used to have with Frank during his later years as he sat there with Robert‘s dogs after their morning walk. But there’s one horticultural issue that has intrigued and mystified me for years.  It’s the great Bay Tree conundrum.  Where did they come from?  Where did they go to? The exact date escapes me, but it was about 1989 or 1990, that we arrived to find that Laurus Nobilis appeared to be planning to take over the world (or at least Tresco) akin to an evil Davros and his Dalek hoards.  Wherever we went there were rows upon rows of bay trees in 3 inch pots.  They were at the garden entrance and the shop (in their old locations, of course), the Quay Shop, in the propagating tunnels down near where the Fire Brigade training area is, at the Dolphin Tea Rooms, the Island Hotel, the New Inn, Timothy’s Corner and up at the Borough. You could turn a corner while walking the many paths that cross up Racket Town, through the plantation and across to Appletree or Penzance Road and there would be another few dozen. And yet within a year every single one had disappeared again.  Where did they go to?  Did the Estate suddenly manage to capture the bay tree market?  Can you trade the species on futures? Yes, you could have bought one for £3.00 or thereabouts, but it would have needed a tourist population similar to that of Benidorm to have sold them all. Is there some foreign field, full of bay trees, that is forever Tresco? Or another enchanting and enchanted Tresco where they will re-appear, Brigadoon-like in years to come?  Are we soon to see its like again? (I did spot quite a few Hydrangeas round by the greenhouses during my last visit!).

Yes, I bought one of the little bay plants, now 6ft tall and still thriving outdoors in my frost-pocket in the Weald of Kent.  I don’t have a decent photo of it,  so here’s a a picture of climber Ghislaine de Felingourd tumbling over my shed instead.