Anna Pavord: 'Bay trees are hardy and produce leaves that cooks will appreciate having to hand'

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You often see shaggy old bay trees growing in the gardens of cottages and farmhouses in the West Country. Their chief purpose was not to flavour a stew but to protect the place against witches, which is why you find them planted so close to the houses. We've been lucky to have inherited old bay trees in both the places we've lived in Dorset. The one in the rectory garden was by the front gate, a tangle of suckering growths that, unchecked, had pushed through the ivy to make an impenetrable evergreen thicket.












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