Fragrant White Tea Olive – 7 Gallon Pot (4-5′)

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Producing an abundance of some of the most wonderfully fragrant flowers in existence, the Fragrant Tea Olive, Osmanthus fragrans, also called Sweet Olive, is an attractive large evergreen shrub or small tree that flowers on and off for up to 6 months out of the year! The flowers are tiny but boy do they pack a fragrant punch! All it takes is one Tea Olive to fill your front or backyard with a heavenly scent of sweet perfume. The scent is really indescribable. No other fragrant plant we know of smells like the Tea Olive. It’s just one of those things you have to experience for yourself. The flowers are produced in both spring and fall and during the winter whenever nighttime temperatures are between about 45 to 65 degrees. In our gardens here in north-central Georgia, the White Tea Olives blooms off and one for about 6 months out of the year, depending on the weather.

With and upright growth habit and rounded form 10 to 15 feet tall and 6 to 8 feet wide (depending on pruning), the White Tea Olive can be grown as a large shrub or small tree. As a shrub, its dense foliage makes it ideal for use as an evergreen hedge, privacy screen, or background in landscape borders or to frame corners or fill voids between widely-spaced windows in home foundation plantings. As it grows taller, which it does rather quickly, lower branches can be removed to a desired height to form a highly attractive focal point specimen tree for use in sunny to partially shaded landscape borders and home foundation plantings. There’s no need to plant this one near windows as one plant can fill a front or back yard with sweet aroma. A fine addition to fragrance gardens, white theme gardens, Asian gardens and Xeriscape gardens (low water needs).

Suggested Spacing:  5 to 6 feet apart for a solid hedge;  12 feet or more apart for space between plants

Note: For our customers who live and garden North of USDA Cold Hardiness Zone 7b, where this Tea Olive variety is not reliably winter hardy, you’ll be happy to know it can be grown in containers that can be brought indoors during winter and placed back outside when temperatures warm up in spring.

The White Tea Olive is very easy to grow in most any average, moist but well-drained soil and full sun to part shade. We suggest at least 5 hours of direct sunlight per day or all-day lightly filtered sun for best flowering. As with many other plants, a constantly soggy or wet soil can be problematic. Exceptionally drought tolerant when established. Over decades, we’ve seen no insect or disease problems and deer won’t touch it.