Laurus Nobilis (Bay Laurel) Guild?

Picking up a bay laurel tree and curious what would you guys recommend for a guild? It's supposed to be tolerant of different kinds of soils, but susceptible to scale and aphids.

Since bay Laurel smells good maybe put it with rosemary and some other herbs.

Are you planning for the bay tree to be the overstory?

My current sad little tree in Hamburg is now about two feet tall, from one foot tall.  I want to keep it as a small shrub, so should it ever look other than sickly I'll keep it hard pruned.  I just planted some hostas around it to protect it from encroaching grass.  Otherwise it's in partial shade from hazelnuts and there are a number of raspberries in the area.

My experience in Seattle was that, height-uncontrolled, it became a tall handsome tree.  It would prefer to be bush-shaped, and it will sucker madly, so if you want to plant underneath it you should expect to prune it into shape, which it accepts easily.  It throws a really deep shade, though.  So maybe it would be better as an understory tree or bush layer.  Also, YMMV, but there are only so many bay leaves I can cook with in a lifetime.  I have heard that Penzey's Spices uses bay leaves as packing material, so that's another fine use.  Are there other functions you're expecting to get from it?

Can Bay leaves be used as mulch? Must they be composted first? And what can I grow under the tree beside rosemary and lavender? Mine is a tall and beautiful tree with many suckers under it. The light is pretty dim underneath.

I have one on the south (shady) side of the house. I pollard it pretty ruthlessly...every year or two it gets cut back to a trunk with a few stubs. Otherwise it would dominate the space and pretty much nothing would grow in the dense shade apart from moss. As it is, there's only some wild balm and weedy grasses under it these days. I tried to get some other Mediterranean herbs going there, and there might still be an oregano plant or two, but it's not really a herb-friendly space on that side of the house. Too dark and damp for most of the year.

They do sucker like mad, so anything underneath them would need to cope whatever you do to manage this. My solution would probably be containers....