Fragrant Tea Olive

Many of you have happy memories playing near this incredible shrub. The Fragrant Tea Olive (Osmanthus fragrans) bears deliciously scented, tiny white flower clusters from fall through early spring.

This is a very popular, upright evergreen shrub also known as the Sweet Olive or Fragrant Olive. The heavenly scent is described as rich and sweetly fruity like Apricot or Peach. Others think it smells like a gorgeous cross between Gardenia and Jasmine. You can easily smell the dainty flowers blooming on a Fragrant Tea Olive in every part of your yard.

It’s absolutely covered in blooms in early spring, and sporadically through summer with another flush of blooms in fall. Depending on where you live, the Fragrant Tea Olive can provide color and scent at a time when other plants aren’t blooming.

This wonderful shrub is the Lilac’s answer for the warmer Zones It’s incredibly versatile and can be grown in either full sun or in partial shade.

It’s native to a wide area of Asia, where it has been a popular landscape plant for thousands of years. Today, modern homeowners around the world show an appreciation for its beauty and fragrance.

Like many Asian plants, the Fragrant Tea Olive displays a graceful form. With branches that are held strongly erect, the upright growth habit of this shrub easily brings a visual energy to your landscape.

With dark green, finely toothed, vibrantly glossy evergreen leaves held densely from the base to the top, the Fragrant Tea Olive makes a wonderful screening plant or soft hedge. It can be used in many ways, including pruned as a magnificent small tree or as a standalone specimen.

It gets its name from the tiny black fruit that you will hardly notice. The fruit is inedible, and this is a shrub grown for it’s wonderful fragrant flowers. The shiny evergreen foliage is a big bonus!

People dry the edible flowers to include in green and black tea mixes. In addition, the flowers are used in Sweet Cakes, dumplings, soups and liquors. The flowers are also found in traditional Chinese medicine where it has been used to treat assorted ailments.

Whether you order it for its beauty or its fragrance, you will be glad you bought it and wonder why you didn't order more. That heavenly smell really takes you back. Don’t miss this one – order today!

How to Use Fragrant Tea Olive in the Landscape

Grown as a shrub, or limbed up over time into either a multi-trunked or single trunked tree, you’ll love exploring the ways Fragrant Tea Olive can decorate your landscape. A versatile plant, this selection has many applications in the landscape.

Popular as a useful screen or hedge plant, the Fragrant Tea Olive takes to pruning very well. Plant as close as 4 to 5 feet on center to allow this slow to moderate growing plant to fill in quickly. Use a staggered double row with a zig-zagged planting pattern to reach coverage even faster.

This is the perfect plant for that location that needs a hedge but is in some shade. Add this fragrant flowering shrub to existing windbreaks or create a new “living fence”. We advise buying the largest container size in stock to shortcut the process.

Use this fragrant evergreen to create the walls of a special garden room. It would be an incredible addition to a Zen, Asian or Meditation Garden. Why not gift yourself a private retreat by carving out some space in your back yard?

You’d be amazed at how much larger your yard will look when you introduce screening as a design element. If you can’t see everything all at once, the yard looks twice as large!

A hedge of Fragrant Tea Olive looks crisp and clean. With its vertical lines, it makes a wonderful contrasting backdrop for plants with rounded or even weeping habits.

If you want a very special accent tree, select the strongest trunks and remove all the rest. Choose 1, 3, 4, or 5 for different looks. Limb up the lowest horizontal branches. Over time, you can train Fragrant Tea Olive into a specimen accent tree. Anchor the corner of your foundation – or use to accent a patio area. It will thrive in either full sun or part shade.

You can even grow this plant in a large container. Keep it as a houseplant in cold winter zones and bring it out as a seasonal patio plant. You’ll love the wonderful fragrance to a patio area as well as the healthy, rich, green foliage.

Overwinter your plant indoors in a well-lit, protected location. Watch your winter water and be careful not to overwater the plant when inside. The Fragrant Tea Tree can be a large house plant when given plenty of light and a location away from dry heat sources like stoves or heater vents.

Even warm winter gardeners might like to use this plant in gorgeous containers. You can easily keep it pruned for size, and a portable version can be placed in just the right spots to screen your home from prying eyes. Use several in matching containers for a lush, stylish and sophisticated patio decoration.

Many areas list the Fragrant Tea Olive on their firewise plant lists for firescaping.

#ProPlantTips for Care

It's such a beautiful and wonderfully scented shrub that you'd think it would be a diva in the garden, but it's not. This is an easy care plant that asks for well-drained soil and a yearly application of fertilizer for acidic plants in spring. It easily tolerates of a wide range of soil types – including clay - as long as the drainage is good. Don’t plant this too deeply.

In the hotter areas, give the Fragrant Tea Olive protection from the hot afternoon sun and a thick 3 to 4 inch layer of mulch over the root zone. In Zone 7, don’t plant this in open, windy areas to reduce the chance of winter burn.

It is disease-resistant and becomes drought tolerant after the first season. For best results, allow soil to dry out a bit between deep, saturating watering sessions to encourage root growth. Do keep an eye on new plants. Increase water during periods of exceptionally hot and dry temperatures.

Fragrant Tea Olive will grow to a tall shrub over time. If you’d like to keep the size in check, prune 1/3 off the top every few years. Wait until after the early spring blooms are finished.

This is a wonderful plant that easily perfumes your landscape. Once you smell those fabulous flowers, we know you’ll find a spot for it somewhere outside or even in your home as a houseplant.

Order now, as we regularly sell out of inventory of this popular shrub.