How To Care for a Tea Olive Tree

What's that fragrance perfuming the garden air? It's tea olive, the glossy-leaved shrub known by the scientific name Osmanthus fragrans. Commonly, you can call the plant tea olive or sweet olive, as both names nod to the sweet scent emitted by the plant's tiny, white blooms. This species belongs to the genus Osmanthus. Osmanthus species are drought-tolerant, evergreen shrubs that thrive in full sun or partial shade. Their calling card is their deeply fragrant blooms, which appear throughout the year. The flowers appear as tiny, white blossoms, but their size belies their big, floral perfume.

Their biggest bloom happens in the spring and summer, but they also bloom intermittently throughout the year, even in the final days of fall. The New Southern Living Garden Book describes the stats of the evergreen shrub this way, "Long a favorite of Southern gardeners, [tea olive is] broad, dense, compact. Grows at a moderate rate to 15 feet tall and 8-10 feet wide, though older plants may reach 30 feet tall and 12-15 feet wide." The plants' foliage is very attractive, with glossy, medium-to-deep-green leaves that grow to around 4 inches long. They can be toothed or have rounded, smooth edges. The New Southern Living Garden Book notes the plants' intense perfume, "Flowers are powerfully fragrant, with a scent like that of ripe apricots. Bloom is heaviest in spring, but plants flower sporadically throughout the year."

This is a very versatile planting and can thrive even with extreme pruning. It can be shaped to fit in small spaces or can be allowed to grow big and sprawling where there is a lot of empty space. It can also take many shapes and can be trained into nearly every planting form you can imagine: shrub, tree, hedge, screen or privacy planting, espalier—even a container plant. In the way of garden responsibilities, there's not much that this plant can't take on. They grow best in full sun with some afternoon shade.

According to The New Southern Living Garden Book, "'Butter Yellow' produces lots of butter-yellow flowers. 'Fudingzhu' is an outstanding form, more cold hardy and not as large as the species, and it blooms for a much longer time with large, showy clusters of blooms. 'Orange Supreme' is a well-shaped plant with bright orange blossoms. O. f. aurantiacus has narrower, less glossy leaves than the species; its crop of wonderfully fragrant orange flowers in concentrated in early fall."

In addition to tea olive, Southern gardeners have many options for growing fragrant plants in their gardens that come in a variety of formats, including vines, shrubs, and trees. For climbers, there's always climbing roses, wisteria, and clematis. But honeysuckle, a sweet, honeyed scented vine, is a Southern favorite because it's heat tolerant and hardy. Heavenly scented Confederate jasmine is an evergreen vine that can also be used as a ground cover. Deeply fragrant 'Honey Perfume' roses are a deciduous shrub option, while intensely scented gardenias are a Southern classic, evergreen shrub. And don't forget Southern magnolia trees with their large, powerfully scented flowers that can grow 80- to 20-feet high depending on the species selected.

Do you have any tea olives growing in your garden? What's your favorite fragrant Southern bloomer?